Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Setting up a system that rewards you for meeting your goals and has penalties for failing to hit your target is just as important as putting your goals down on paper.
I think the only thing that I really thought about, I am always every year thinking about how I can get better, how my stuff can get better, how our team can improve.
Success lulls you. It makes the most ambitious of us complacent and sloppy. In a way, you have to cultivate a kind of amnesia and forget all of your previous prosperity.
My parents taught me a long time ago that you win in life with people, and that's important, because if you hang with winners, you stand a great chance of being a winner.
There is not that many players that really can take over games, signed Candace Parker, I really felt like at that time that a National Championship was certainly in reach.
I think you can challenge people, but you don't want to break people down. But you've got to sometimes just pull them aside and say, you know, you're OK but you could be better.
Competition got me off the farm and trained me to seek out challenges and to endure setbacks; and in combination with my faith, it sustains me now in my fight with Alzheimer's disease.
We keep score in life because it matters. It counts. It matters. Too many people opt out and never discover their own abilities because they fear failure. They don't understand commitment.
I never ask Candace Parker if she was thinking about leaving because I never had any reason to believe she would. I just kept the focus on the team and on Candace and the role she played for us.
When you choose to be a competitor you choose to be a survivor. When you choose to compete, you make the conscious decision to find out what your real limits are, not just what you think they are.
Winning is fun... Sure. But winning is not the point. Wanting to win is the point. Not giving up is the point. Never letting up is the point. Never being satisfied with what you've done is the point.
A competitor continually sets new goals. He feels the need to keep raising the bar. If the fist goal is to make the team, and he achieves it, he immediately resets the goal to: I want to be a starter.
The greatest strength any human being an have is to recognize his or her own weaknesses. When you identify your weaknesses, you can begin to remedy them - or at least figure out how to work around them.
I remember standing on a medal podium at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, imbued with a sense that if you won enough basketball games, there was no such thing as poor, backward, country, female, or inferior.
Teamwork is really a form of trust. It's what happens when you surrender the mistaken idea that you can go it alone and realize that you won't achieve your individual goals without the support of your colleagues.
When you learn to keep fighting in the face of potential failure, it gives you a larger skill set to do what you want to do in life. It gives you vision. But you can't acquire it if you're afraid of keeping score.
Have you ever walked along a shoreline, only to have your footprints washed away? That's what Alzheimer's is like. The waves erase the marks we leave behind, all the sand castles. Some days are better than others.
I remember teaching a clinic to other coaches, and a guy raised his hand and asked if I had any advice when it came to coaching women. I leveled him with a death-ray stare, and said, 'Go home and coach basketball.'
Accountability is essential to personal growth, as well as team growth. How can you improve if you're never wrong? If you don't admit a mistake and take responsibility for it, you're bound to make the same one again.
In my case, symptoms began to appear when I was only 57. In fact, the doctors believe early-onset Alzheimer's has a strong genetic predictor, and that it may have been progressing for some years before I was diagnosed.
I've always put great emphasis on the academics and getting your degree. It's important because basketball is short term. The long term is what are you gonna do after college and after you no longer can bounce the ball.
Attitude lies somewhere between emotion and logic. It's that curious mix of optimism and determination that enables you to maintain a positive outlook and to continue plodding in the face of the most adverse circumstances.
I am about helping each and every student athlete that selects to wear the orange, you know, be successful at Tennessee individually and as a team. That type of record is certainly not anything that I have aspirations to reach.
By doing things when you are too tired, by pushing yourself farther than you thought you could - like running the track after a two-hour practice - you become a competitor. Each time you go beyond your perceived limit, you become mentally stronger.
There is always someone better than you. Whatever it is that you do for a living, chances are, you will run into a situation in which you are not as talented as the person next to you. That's when being a competitor can make a difference in your fortunes.
I think that it was a great feeling and probably a little bit more special because of the length of time that had passed before we won, but I think more importantly, it was just a great feeling because this team had such strong leadership and they had great chemistry.
The absolute heart of loyalty is to value those people who tell you the truth, not just those people who tell you what you want to hear. In fact, you should value them most. Because they have paid you the compliment of leveling with you and assuming you can handle it.
A lot of kids just want to go play basketball, but they don't know to play and they don't have the skills to play. I think just the skill development right off and then play all you can, but don't sacrifice your skill development by just playing and not working on the specifics of the game.
You're wondering what a bale of hay has to do with success. Well, there's a trick to loading hay. You have to use your knee. What you do is, you put your right knee behind it and half kick it up in the air. That way you get some lift on it. ... My point is, there are certain ways to make a hard job easier.
Actually, when I saw it in USA Today, I just, Candace Parker was, we were warming up in practice and she was underneath the basket shooting and I just said, 'Hey Candace! I enjoyed what I read in the paper today about your decision [to stay].' She just started laughing and I did too. So I haven't discussed it with her.
I was a little concerned about it when State Farm approached me because, you know, I've never done a commercial by any means, but I tried to look at it as something that would be good for our game. We've never had a women's basketball coach represented in that fashion and I love State Farm for the fact they really support the women's game.
I love teaching I think more than anything. It's the opportunity to just teach young people and teach the game. You teach more than basketball. You teach life skills. The teaching part of it is something that I am passionate about. I look forward to every practice. A lot of people say well, I enjoy coaching, but I see myself as more as a teacher.
I think basketball has changed tremendously and for the better. I think that obviously the game is better. I think the skill of the players are better, the strength, the overall athleticism, the teamwork involved. I think coaching is better. We have more exposure for our game than ever. You know, our sport has grown significantly in really the last five years. It's pretty amazing.
Bringing together disparate personalities to form a team is like a jigsaw puzzle. You have to ask yourself: what is the whole picture here? We want to make sure our players all fit together properly and complement each other, so that we don't have a big piece, a little piece, an oblong piece, and a round piece. If personalities work against each other, as a team you'll find yourselves spinning your wheels.
I remember every player-every single one-who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, "or in a correctional institution," as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway.