Championship Sports Quotes

Side note: Down here, you're either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you'll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he's a legend, all-star personality, but there's the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e. won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don't know. Finally, there's Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand.

Temple University sports psychologist Michael Sachs, who made an extensive study of these states, summed this up nicely: “Every gold medal or world championship that’s ever been won, most likely, we now know, there’s a flow state behind the victory.

Listen, you have to understand something. In all of the history of professional sports, the Cubs are the ultimate symbol of complete failure. The championship of baseball is something called the World Series, and it’s been so long since the Cubs have won it that no one who is alive could remember the last time they won it. It’s so long that no one alive knew anyone who was alive when they won it. We’re talking centuries of abject failure here.

Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, and windiest place on the planet. The South Pole averages sixty below zero, has hurricane-strength winds, and sits at an altitude of ten thousand feet. In other words, those original explorers didn’t have to just get there, but had to climb serious mountains to do so. (Side note: Down here, you’re either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you’ll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he’s a legend, all-star personality, but there’s the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e., won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don’t know. Finally, there’s Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand.)

Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he’s a legend, all-star personality, but there’s the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e., won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don’t know.

... and Brian Dooher is down injured. And while he is, I'll tell ye a little story. I was in Times Square in New York last week, and I was missing the Championship back home. So I approached a newsstand and I said 'I suppose you wouldn't have the Kerryman would you?' To which the Egyptian man behind the counter replied 'do you want the North Kerry edition or the South Kerry edition?'. He had both, so I bought both. And Dooher is back on his feet...

After winning championships as a player in high school and college, I thought I knew everything. I had no patience with the kids. I wanted immediate results. I tried to force them to understand things that came naturally to me as a player.

You see twenty-six years ago, when I was in high school, my goal and mission in life was to win a New York State Wrestling Championship. I committed myself to a lifestyle, made the sacrifices, put in the time, starved myself, shaved my head, had the hunger, desire and determination, but I came up short. For many years, after I graduated it seemed like I got nothing out of my six years of total dedication to the sport. That the trade off of what I gave and what I got in return to this sport was way out of whack. I hated wrestling for it. To put every ounce of your soul into achieving something and to get nothing out of it in return was beyond my comprehension and could not be justified in my head. Until I had adversity in my life. And slowly but surely I started realizing how much the sport of wrestling actually has given back to me. Much more than I ever knew. When life throws you to your back, you need to know how not to get pinned, get off of your back and do enough to make up the difference in order to win.

Champions do not become champions when they win an event, but in the hours, weeks, months, and years they spend preparing for it. The victorious performance itself is merely a demonstration of their championship character.” MICHAEL JORDAN, NBA Champion basketball player

Coach John Wooden [UCLA] taught me that sports wasn’t just about making us better athletes, but about making us better people. Compassion, kindness, and morality were more important than a championship season. Fame wasn’t an accomplishment, it was an opportunity to show our gratitude to the community that we are a part of by changing it for the better.

All through high school and college, his judo coach and older teammates would often say to him, "You have the talent and the strength, and you practice enough, but you just don't have the desire." They were probably right. He lacked that drive to win at all costs, which is why he would often make it to the semifinals and the finals but lose the all-important championship match.

the World Boxing Association and the New York State Athletic Commission had suspended Ali’s boxing license and stripped him of his championship title. Soon after, with a unity of spirit, all the other boxing commissions in the country fell into line. Never mind that they had long tolerated the mafia and professional gamblers in their sport. Never mind that Ali had not yet been convicted of a crime.

The rise of the western crews may have shocked eastern fans, but it delighted newspaper editors across the country in the 1930s. The story fit in with a larger sports narrative that had fueled newspaper and newsreel sales since the rivalry between two boxers—a poor, part-Cherokee Coloradoan named Jack Dempsey and an easterner and ex-Marine named Gene Tunney—had riveted the nation’s attention in the 1920s. The East versus West rivalry carried over to football with the annual East-West Shrine Game and added interest every January to the Rose Bowl—then the nearest thing to a national collegiate football championship. And it was about to have additional life breathed into it when an oddly put together but spirited, rough-and-tumble racehorse named Seabiscuit would appear on the western horizon to challenge and defeat the racing establishment’s darling, the king of the eastern tracks, War Admiral.

When I think about it, I have to say that by 1919 even the Hitler Youth had almost been formed. For example, in our school class we had started a club called the Rennbund Altpreussen (Old Prussia Athletics Club), and took as its motto “Anti-Spartacus, for Sport and Politics.” The politics consisted in occasionally beating up a few unfortunates, who were in favor of the revolution, on the way to school. Sports were the main occupation. We organized athletics championships in the school grounds or public stadia. These gave us the pleasurable sensation of being decidedly anti-Spartacist. We felt very important and patriotic, and ran races for the fatherland. What was that, if not an embryonic Hitler Youth? In truth, certain characteristics later added by Hitler’s personal idiosyncrasies were lacking, anti-Semitism for one. Our Jewish schoolmates ran with the same anti-Spartacist and patriotic zeal as everyone else. Indeed, our best runner was Jewish. I can testify that they did nothing to undermine national unity. During

What I hadn't expected was to be blindsided by a history lesson that betrayed every hard-won experience I'd had as a player and now a coach at the same school I'd attended. . . Whoever was responsible for sending a championship team into virtual obscurity was either a serious egomaniac or just plain mean. It stung. After all, wasn't the story told at today's funeral the stuff of legacies? Of school lore passed on to the next class, and the next, building institutional pride as well as magical identities that made every kid in the state want to play there?

In the chaos of sport, as in life, process provides us a way. It says: Okay, you’ve got to do something very difficult. Don’t focus on that. Instead break it down into pieces. Simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing. Follow the process and not the prize. The road to back-to-back championships is just that, a road. And you travel along a road in steps. Excellence is a matter of steps. Excelling at this one, then that one, and then the one after that. Saban’s process is exclusively this—existing in the present, taking it one step at a time, not getting distracted by anything else. Not the other team, not the scoreboard or the crowd. The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well. Whether it’s pursuing the pinnacle of success in your field or simply surviving some awful or trying ordeal, the same approach works. Don’t think about the end—think about surviving. Making it from meal to meal, break to break, checkpoint to checkpoint, paycheck to paycheck, one day at a time. And when you really get it right, even the hardest things become manageable. Because the process is relaxing. Under its influence, we needn’t panic. Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts.

The night before the last round, the leaders of the Soviet team tried to persuade me not to play in that match. The conversation took place on various levels, from ‘the possibilities of obtaining entry visas to our country are not unlimited’, to ‘don’t forget that you still have a sister in Leningrad’. They did not manage to convince me. ‘I am playing for Holland, not against the Soviet Union’, I repeated, which was not entirely true. A short line from a Soviet newspaper – ‘in the USSR-Holland match, Polugaevsky’s game on board two ended in a draw’ – was my reward: after my departure, my name could not appear in the Soviet press. A report in the Leningrad sports paper, about how 1st-3rd places in the 1973 Dutch Championship were shared by Enklaar and Zuidema, is something that I retain to this day.

Eastern philosophy permeates our society and has invaded every part of our thinking. The new American religion is one of no wrongs and everyone going to heaven. It is a hodge-podge of multiple religions, with the main objective being self-fulfillment and satisfaction. The Christian world has incorporated many of the doctrines of these religions without even knowing it. God’s winning team was supposed to reach the world. Instead, the world is reaching us.

A bad church is like an inoculation. To inoculate someone is to give them a small dose of a disease you don’t want them to get. The body then develops antibodies so it can fight off the disease—the real thing. When people get a small dose of Christianity that doesn’t accurately represent the real thing, then they think they know what the real thing is, but they actually don

What she revealed was not sexy lingerie, but a supportive piece of athletic equipment. After the consolation match that preceded the championship game, both Brazilian and Norwegian players removed their jerseys and exchanged them on the floor of the Rose Bowl. Chastain had previously removed her jersey after regulation to air it out. While training in Florida, the players frequently doffed their shirts after practice in the smothering heat, and they sometimes gave interviews in their sports bras, which were items of utility, not titillation. Chastain 'has brought instant attention to a piece of clothing that is humble and practical, not a traditional bra of shine and lace and cleavage, but a sturdy compression garment,' wrote Ann Gerhart of the Washington Post. 'The sports bra is the cloth symbol of Title IX's success.

On the 8th of October in 2016, Zurich, Switzerland will host the first championship sports event under the name Cybathlon for parathletes using high–tech prostheses, exoskeletons, and other robotic and assistive devices. This

Beliavsky told me that, when he scolded Misha for giving to the Sports Committee almost all of his prize of several thousand dollars for winning the World Blitz Championship in Saint John, Misha simply replied: ‘Well, they asked me for it and I gave it to them.

The biggest threat to the American government is the American people. Of course, the American people are not able to comprehend this information because they have been condition to think that the most important thing in their lives is whether or not their favorite sports team will make it to the championship or not.

Former Olympian distance runner Lynn Jennings shared that her best races were ones in which she wanted to quit halfway through. Why? Because she was out on the edge, pushing herself… The result was championship level performances.

He played for six championship teams. He reached ten Finals and fourteen Conference Finals. His

Let the record show that KG played one of his better games to clinch a championship.

In 1998, K. C. Jones, then coach of the Boston Celtics, mentioned to a CBS Sports interviewer, “I give the players a lot of leeway on the court, so they can use their imagination and creativity.” “Doesn’t that cause problems?” the interviewer asked. “No,” responded Jones. “We’ve been in the championship four of the past five years, and won it twice.” Jones’ approach to coaching illustrates a central truth about creativity: it requires autonomy.

Success isn’t about how many games you win or how much prestige you attain. Winning a state championship has nothing to do with your true legacy. What matters most are the lessons you teach, the impact you have on your community, and the types of men your players eventually become.

The winner of that particular honor is an algorithm called Comparison Counting Sort. In this algorithm, each item is compared to all the others, generating a tally of how many items it is bigger than. This number can then be used directly as the item’s rank. Since it compares all pairs, Comparison Counting Sort is a quadratic-time algorithm, like Bubble Sort. Thus it’s not a popular choice in traditional computer science applications, but it’s exceptionally fault-tolerant. This algorithm’s workings should sound familiar. Comparison Counting Sort operates exactly like a Round-Robin tournament. In other words, it strongly resembles a sports team’s regular season—playing every other team in the division and building up a win-loss record by which they are ranked. That Comparison Counting Sort is the single most robust sorting algorithm known, quadratic or better, should offer something very specific to sports fans: if your team doesn’t make the playoffs, don’t whine. The Mergesort postseason is chancy, but the Comparison Counting regular season is not; championship rings aren’t robust, but divisional standings are literally as robust as it gets. Put differently, if your team is eliminated early in the postseason, it’s tough luck. But if your team fails to get to the postseason, it’s tough truth. You may get sports-bar sympathy from your fellow disappointed fans, but you won’t get any from a computer scientist.

I believe that when we give the game back to our children we demonstrate the highest level of love for these great young spirits. When I ask kids why they play sports, they almost never mention scholarships, going pro, or winning a championship. They usually couldn’t care less about such lofty goals. They want to have fun, feel challenged, and make friends.

Their 108-year wait for another title was the longest championship drought in sports. The last time they did win the World Series, in 1908, occurred in the lifetimes of Mark Twain, Florence Nightingale, Geronimo, Winslow Homer, and Joshua Chamberlain, and in a world when the Ottoman Empire still existed but the 19th Amendment, talking motion pictures, electrified traffic lights, and world wars did not.

I know LeBron James is fantastic right now, but if he’s still winning championships by himself at thirty-six on the fourth version of himself, we can start talking about him and Jordan. And only then.

Pat Riley called this our “disease of more.” Across his career, where he racked up eight NBA championship titles as a coach or GM, he noticed that championship teams across sports usually fail to win again the next year. “Success,” he wrote, “is often the first step toward disaster.” At first, pro athletes just want more wins. But once they win a championship, “more” shifts. They begin to focus their attention on a newly perceived scarcity. They now want more sponsorships, more playing time, more money, more individual recognition.

In the beginning, the UFC was promoting real vale tudo fights. Once American politicans began to criticize it, the UFC modified their rules to shorten the rounds and create weight divisions, turning a martial arts contest into a sport. Having only five minutes in a round to capitalize on an opportunity fundamentally changes the nature of a fight. Although the rules make the UFC more entertaining for fans, ironically, they also make it more violent and less strategic and technical. The UFC was transforming vale tudo into something more brutal.

mathematical constant pi, which he planned to recite at the Mind Sports Olympiad, a weeklong festival of board games to be held a week after the World Memory Championship.

Jason Nemer (IG: @jasonnemer, acroyoga.org) is a cofounder of AcroYoga, which blends the spiritual wisdom of yoga, the loving-kindness of Thai massage, and the dynamic power of acrobatics. Jason was a two-time U.S. Junior National champion in sports acrobatics and represented the U.S. at the World Championships in Beijing in 1991. He performed acrobatics in the opening ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics. AcroYoga now has certified teachers in more than 60 countries and hundreds of thousands of practitioners.

Amelia Boone (TW: @ameliaboone, ameliabooneracing.com) has been called “the Michael Jordan of obstacle course racing” (OCR) and is widely considered the world’s most decorated obstacle racer. Since the inception of the sport, she’s amassed more than 30 victories and 50 podiums. In the 2012 World’s Toughest Mudder competition, which lasts 24 hours (she covered 90 miles and ~300 obstacles), she finished second OVERALL out of more than 1,000 competitors, 80% of whom were male. The one person who beat her finished just 8 minutes ahead of her. Her major victories include the Spartan Race World Championship and the Spartan Race Elite Point Series, and she is the only three-time winner of the World’s Toughest Mudder (2012, 2014, and 2015). She won the 2014 championship 8 weeks after knee surgery. Amelia is also a three-time finisher of the Death Race, a full-time attorney at Apple, and she dabbles in ultra running (qualified for the Western States 100) in all of her spare time.

successful athletes slipping seamlessly into careers in banking and finance owing to their grit and work ethic leaves countless former athletes adrift. After knowing no other life for years, many of the riders I know and respected – cyclists far better than me, with Olympic medals and World Championship titles to their name – have struggled to adjust to life after retiring, ending up homeless, sleeping in their cars, or with depression so severe they take their own lives. The work ethic and ability to endure on the bike rarely map as easily onto other pursuits as young athletes are made to believe, and often the demons that you were trying to exorcise through the sport catch up with you after you’re no longer racing.

Competence: refining the technical, tactical, and sport-specific performance elements

In the morning, I spent ten minutes thinking about all the things I was grateful for. I repeated positive, empowering phrases again and again. I feel great. Today is going to be a great day. Good things are coming my way. I visualized facing several scenarios—good and bad—on the golf course and then executing the perfect shot in each situation. I imagined winning the Gateway Championship—seeing myself with the trophy in hand.

with highlights of the national championship game. The sports section article indeed

The unprecedented 3rd Heavyweight Championship Title won by Muhammad Ali, his final victory, will stand as one of the greatest human achievements in all of sporting history".

While other London clubs in fancier neighborhoods—Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea—have all enjoyed long periods as the capital’s preeminent team with championships and trophies to their name, glory has always remained tantalizingly out of West Ham’s grasp. Not that their fans are unduly concerned; they embrace their status as the city’s gruff, blue-collar underdogs with a healthy slice of gallows humor. When Harry Redknapp, a former player at the club, went to inspect the club’s trophy cabinet after taking over as manager, “Lord Lucan, Shergar, and two Japanese prisoners of war fell out,” he wrote. Even the club’s anthem, “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles,” is an old Broadway tune about shattered dreams and disappointment, and it’s bellowed by thousands of supporters wearing the team’s claret and blue jerseys before every game.

In sports, it is easier to win a championship than to remain a champion in subsequent seasons. And the same is true in life. Once you reach the top, it is more difficult to stay on top. Because, when you become the best in sports, and in life, everyone expects more from you and they want to take you down.

Scientists from Plymouth University and Durham University found that red also boosted the football players’ confidence, where the 68 top English teams from 1946 to 2013 won more games than they lost when they wore this winning color. Famed golf star Tiger Woods, who has won many games and golf championships wearing a red shirt, missed the cut at the May 2019 PGA Championship. Unsurprisingly, he was wearing a black shirt that day.

Ralph Brown coached high school football at St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, California. He is an accomplished football player who has won various championships and awards. He proudly served as a sports broadcaster for Fox Sports West Prenzone for 3 years, and he was a sports analyst for the ABC affiliate in Lincoln Nebraska, covering Husker Football. Ralph currently serves as a mentor and motivational speaker to young athletes.

Social capital, or “networks of trust,” are rooted in relationships based on a common set of norms and values that bind a group of individuals together and enable them to collaborate more effectively. Networks of trust are critical in complex systems that demand high performance under fast-paced, ambiguous, and evolving conditions. Successful outcomes in military special forces, modern aviation, championship sports, and hyper-growth startups all require teamwork that is grounded in trust and a shared sense of purpose.

Stars of Recent World Cups, or European Championships Are Overvalued The worst time to buy a player is in the summer when he’s just done well at a big tournament. Everyone in the transfer market has seen how good the player is, but he is exhausted and quite likely sated with success.

Volleyball was clearly a sport invented by the devil," I tell Tristan. "Satan plays volleyball. Satan loves volleyball. Satan holds volleyball championships in hell, possibly everyday.

Eric Boocock had been England’s No.1 for a spell in the late 60s and early 70s. He reached three world finals and in 1974 put the town on the map by winning the British Championship in front of a 10,000 crowd and ITV's World of Sport cameras. Everybody

Permian had established itself as perhaps the most successful football dynasty in the country—pro, college, or high school. Few brands of sport were more competitive than Class AAAAA Texas high school football, the division for the biggest schools in the state. Odessa was hardly the only town that nurtured football and cherished it and went crazy over it. But no one came close to matching the performance of Permian. Since 1964 it had won four state championships, been to the state finals a record eight times, and made the playoffs fifteen times. Its worst record in any season over that time span had been seven and two, and its winning percentage overall, .825, was by far the best of any team in the entire state in the modern era of the game dating back to 1951. All this wasn’t accomplished with kids who weighed 250 pounds and were automatic major-college prospects, but with kids who often weighed 160 or 170 or even less. They had no special athletic prowess. They weren’t especially fast or especially strong. But they were fearless and relentlessly coached and from the time they were able to walk they had only one certain goal in their lives in Odessa, Texas. Whatever it took, they would play for Permian.

Champion... being a champion has nothing to do with sports... its a mindset.. A skill of looking at challenges that seem impossible, and Rising Up To Overcome.. You don't quit, you don't give up.... You get it Done no matter what.. No matter how many losses you get,, No matter how big the obstacles are.. You outlast until you are the one on top with your Team Mates.. Period.. IT takes a Leader and a Championship Team... but you only get that with The Mindset of a Champion...

Kara fully accepted that her conscience might burst through the wall later in life, bearded, emaciated, and ready to wreak havoc on whatever successful position in life lacking a conscience had elevated her to. But as she gripped the pole, she had to admit it was a lot easier to focus on sports when you didn’t give a damn about anything in life that was actually important.

After winning championships as a player in high school and college, I thought I knew everything. I had no patience with the kids. I wanted immediate results. I tried to force them to understand things that came naturally to me as a player. I failed to realize that each person is different and that the same approach won’t work for everyone.

After that first season, I wondered if I had what it took to be a successful coach. I know the people who hired me were wondering as well.” “You obviously turned things around after that,” I said. “I did indeed,” Wooden said. “I learned some hard lessons quickly and changed my approach. Of course, it took me decades to develop the coaching philosophy that I would become known for. “People now see me as the coach who won those ten national championships, had the four undefeated teams, had the 88-game winning streak, and coached those All-Americans. They forget what a long and difficult journey it had been before I started seeing those kinds of results.