Sports Parenting Quotes

If I have a son and he decides to play cricket, I will want him to bat like Sachin Tendulkar.

I thought I raised a ballplayer. You're nothing but a coward and a quitter.

I've got five grandkids. They play baseball, they play football, they play basketball. I go to all the games. You always have that urge to say something when you're watching them. But I've learned to keep it to myself. I've blurted out some things and embarrassed myself.

My parents have done a tremendous job, over the course of my career. They try to make every game and I think my rookie year, my mom made every game... They've been really consistent and it's all you can ask for as a kid.

I've been taking pictures at Trey's games since he was seven.

I have a 16 year-old son, so I'm now a soccer mom. I stand on the sidelines and I hear the things parents are saying, so I want them to understand what it is their kids are feeling in any sports environment.

My mom, she wasn't like a baseball mother who knew everything about the game. She just wanted me to be happy with what I was doing.

It was okay for Wayne Gretzky's dad, for instance, to give him a hockey stick, or Joe Montana's dad to give him a football, or Larry Bird's dad to give him a basketball, but it wasn't okay for Gloria Connors to give her son a tennis racquet.

I know many people who are actually queasy about the idea that their kids may harbour sporting ambitions.

I'm as proud as the next guy, but I've always been a little skeptical of the daddies who walk around talking about what great athletes their kids are.

My father loved baseball and he cultivated my talent. I don't think he ever had any doubt in his mind that I would play professional baseball someday.

If you look at top players - Steffi Graf, Andre Agassi - so many had a parent who was domineering to the point where you really had to question his sanity. It was nuts.

In my family, Mom can lead the sports activities, no problem! Except football - that, my husband does.

My mom to this day is the hardest coach I've ever had. There were times when my stepdad would look at me and say 'you had a good game' and my mom would be like 'I don't know what you're talking about, you had 2 or 3 turnovers.

Both of my sons used to coach high school football. When they started, I'd say things I shouldn't have. So I learned my lesson.

From when I was 7 until I was 22, I played football. That was always my struggle as a kid. I always wanted to be an artist, but my parents were divorced, and my dad really wanted me to play sports, and that's how I got to see him. He would come pick me up or take me to practice, and he was always at my games.

If I didn't play well, Dad was the first one to tell me where I'd gone wrong and give great advice.

Growing up as an athlete, I started skating very young. My parents didn't know anything about the sport, so they went with the flow. I had two great coaches who gave great advice and gave guidelines for my parents. My parents let the coaches dictate what was going on on the ice.

Thankfully, I found athletics. My mum didn't like it at first, but the funny thing is that, now, she's the biggest athletics fan out there. She's a real expert, and she's got all the heptathlon books.

People say how unbelievable and enjoyable this whole thing must be. But watching your children play quarterback, putting themselves on the line every game, getting smacked around and bloodied up... it's very, very hard.

It's hard when your father's the coach. Sometimes you don't know where one leaves off and the other begins.

It is nerve-wracking watching my kids' games.

It is just a crazy life as a sportsman. My daughter, Sam, wants to go into tennis, and I tell her, 'No, you don't want to go into professional sport.'

I think that it takes one person in the household to be a baseball fan for people to love baseball. And if you don't love baseball as a parent, your kids are not going to love it because you're not watching it.

I could have gone down a very different path, but my parents would not let me give up football.