“Overpower. Overtake. Overcome.” – Serena Williams
This collection of motivational quotes by female athletes is part of our ongoing series dedicated to elevating the potential of today’s youth. As providers of figure skating and gymnastics class management software, we are deeply invested in the development of strong female athletes. So, when we set out to find the most inspirational quotes by female athletes, we also studied the history of women in sports. What we found is a trail blazed by the world’s greatest female athletes, from 1900 to current day.
Skip to Best Quotes for Female Athletes
Women have been participating in international sport since the second modern Olympic games in the year 1900. However, the number of women participating in sport has often been far less than men. For example, during those 1900 Olympic games, of the 1066 athletes reportedly participating, only 12 of them were women.
It wasn’t until recently, at the London 2012 games, that women participated in an equal amount of Olympic events as men. And it’s taken a lot of effort to get to this level of parity.
It’s taken numerous laws, governing bodies, and working groups to enable greater female participation in sports. In the United States, Title IX was introduced in 1974 to force equal federal funding for both male and female sports. Internationally, the International Working Group on Women and Sport was founded in 1994 to empower women and create a sustainable sporting culture based on gender equality.
The Rise of Dominant Female Athletes
We have written about Gender Inequality in Sports so we know there is still much work to do. However, we are undoubtedly in a better position today than decades prior. Today, children everywhere can be inspired by female athlete role models competing on the global stage.
If you Google “best athletes of all time” one of the first faces you’ll see is Serena Williams, and she’s not alone. Alongside Williams are female athletic peers including Steffi Graf, Martina Navratilova, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
In Canada, numerous female athletes have become household names including Clara Hughes, Hayley Wickenheiser, Christine Sinclair, Tessa Virtue and many more. The future is bright for women in sports.
Are you a coach or parent looking to inspire the next generation of young women in sports?
We’ve collected 61 of the most inspiring quotes from the women who have dominated their respective sport. We hope you’ll use them to foster the growth of tomorrow’s dominant female athletes.
Best Quotes by Female Athletes who want to improve:
1) “You should never stay at the same level. Always push yourself to the next.” – Marnelli Dimzon
2) “There’s no substitute for hard work. If you work hard and prepare yourself, you might get beat, but you’ll never lose.” – Nancy Lieberman
3) “They say discipline and dedication and respect are the key factors, but patience is a virtue that is absolutely essential!” – Ria Ramnarine
4) “There are always new, grander challenges to confront, and a true winner will embrace each one.” – Mia Hamm
5) “I’d rather regret the risks that didn’t work out than the chances I didn’t take at all.” – Simone Biles
6) “There is always going to be a reason why you can’t do something; your job is to constantly look for the reasons why you can achieve your dreams.” – Shannon Miller
7) “Champions keep playing until they get it right.” – Billie Jean King
8) “You make your own luck. You make it in training.” – Simone Biles
9) “If you think you’re done, you always have at least 40 percent more.” – Lauren Crandall
10) “Erase the word “failure” from your vocabulary. No case is ever truly closed, and no challenge is ever over.” – Mary Lou Retton
11) “Many times, I had to dig deep and perform. All of that adversity helped me and drove me to want to be the best.” – Hayley Wickenheiser
12) “Set realistic goals, keep re-evaluating, and be consistent.” – Venus Williams
13) “If you care about the people you work with then you work harder.” – Kristine Lilly
14) “I always try to start out with some type of goal. Then I work backward and think of what I need to do to get there, and give myself smaller goals that are more immediate.” – Kristi Yamaguchi
15) “We can push ourselves further. We always have more to give.” – Simone Biles
16) “No matter what the competition is, I try to find a goal that day and better that goal.” – Bonnie Blair
17) “I believe in the impossible because no one else does.” – Florence Griffith Joyner
18) “You can’t always be the best. You have to remember that everyone makes mistakes sometimes.” – Aly Raisman
19) “Continuous effort — not strength or intelligence — is the key to unlocking our potential.” – Liane Cardes
20) “Overpower. Overtake. Overcome.” – Serena Williams
Motivational Quotes by Female Athletes with A Champion’s Mindset
21) “The greatest asset is a strong mind. If I know someone is training harder than I am, I have no excuses.” – P.V. Sindhu
22) “Passion first and everything will fall into place.” – Holly Holm
23) “Once you give them the power to tell you you’re great, you’ve also given them the power to tell you you’re unworthy. Once you start caring about people’s opinions of you, you give up control.” – Ronda Rousey
24) “Take your victories, whatever they may be, cherish them, use them, but don’t settle for them.” – Mia Hamm
25) “The ability to conquer one’s self is no doubt the most precious of all things that sports bestows.” – Olga Korbut
26) “If you persevere long enough, if you do the right things long enough, the right things will happen.” – Manon Rheaume
27) “The potential for greatness lives within each of us.” – Wilma Rudolph
28) “As much time as you put into it, that’s what your achievements are going to be when you come out of it.” – Mary Lou Retton
29) “I know how to smile, I know how to laugh, I know how to play. But I know how to do these things only after I have fulfilled my mission.” – Nadia Comaneci
30) “Somewhere behind the athlete you’ve become and the hours of practice and the coaches who have pushed you is a little girl who fell in love with the game and never looked back… play for her.” – Mia Hamm
31) “You control your own wins and losses.” – Maria Sharapova
32) “It doesn’t matter what you’re trying to accomplish. It’s all a matter of discipline.” – Wilma Rudolph
33) “You’ve got to be confident when you’re competing. You’ve got to be a beast.” – Gabby Douglas
34) “If you want to achieve something in life, you have to take risks.” – Dipa Karmakar
35) “Courage, sacrifice, determination, commitment, toughness, heart, talent, guts. That’s what little girls are made of; the heck with sugar and spice.” – Bethany Hamilton
36) “Take those chances and you can achieve greatness, whereas if you go conservative, you’ll never know. I truly believe what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Even if you fail, learning and moving on is sometimes the best thing.” – Danica Patrick
Quotes About Determination from Women in Sports
37) “I don’t run away from a challenge because I am afraid. Instead, I run toward it because the only way to escape fear is to trample it beneath your feet.” – Nadia Comăneci
38) “The only one who can tell you “you can’t win” is you and you don’t have to listen.” – Jessica Ennis
39) “Don’t let your fear decide your future.” – Shalane Flanagan
40) “People would say, ‘Girls don’t play hockey. Girls don’t skate.’ I would say, ‘Watch this.'” – Hayley Wickenheiser
41) “All the physical comes from the mental.” – Clara Hughes
42) “Without goals, training has no direction.” – Natalie Coughlin
43) “Practice creates confidence. Confidence empowers you.” – Simone Biles
44) “Success in life comes to those who simply refuse to give up; individuals with vision so strong that obstacles, failure and loss only act as teachings.” – Silken Laumann
45) “Rather than focusing on the obstacle in your path, focus on the bridge over the obstacle.” – Mary Lou Retton
46) “We all have obstacles. The feeling of satisfaction comes by overcoming something.” – Marta
47) “You never know if you can actually do something against all odds until you actually do it.” – Abby Wambach
48) “I’ve worked too hard and too long to let anything stand in the way of my goals. I will not let my teammates down and I will not let myself down.” – Mia Hamm
49) “I’m very task-oriented. The idea of constantly pursuing something with purpose helps me to stay focused.” – Tessa Virtue
50) “You have to remember that the hard days are what make you stronger. The bad days make you realize what a good day is. If you never had any bad days, you would never have that sense of accomplishment!” – Aly Raisman
51) “Don’t let people tell you that you can’t do something.” – Laurie Hernandez
52) “I really think a champion is defined not by their wins but by how they can recover when they fall.” – Serena Williams
53) “I always want to give more than I gave yesterday.” – Allyson Felix
Female Athlete Quotes About Perspective
54) “A failure isn’t a failure if it prepares you for success tomorrow.” – Lolo Jones
55) “Believe me; the reward is not so great without the struggle.” – Wilma Rudolph
56) “I do my best, and that’s all I can do.” – Caroline Wozniacki
57) “I push myself to be the best I can be. I don’t worry about what other people are doing, and I don’t think about things I can’t control.” – Annika Sorenstam
58) “You have to be positive, and I’m not just talking about athletics, this also applies to life.” – Sheryl Swoopes
59) “You face adversity all the time. I accept what lies ahead and then I do my best. You can’t take things too seriously, and you can’t use things as an excuse or you’ll never get through.” – Kristine Lilly
60) “Being nervous is not something you should be ashamed of. Nervous means you care, you really want to do well.” – Paula Creamer
61) “Acknowledge your small victories. They will eventually add up to something great.” – Kara Goucher
62) “Without your downs, without your hardships, I don’t think you appreciate the ups as much.” – Michelle Wie
63) “When you fail you learn from the mistakes you made and it motivates you to work even harder.” – Natalie Gulbis
64) “We’re all different, so even though someone is getting a skill before you, it doesn’t mean that you’re not good enough; it just means you have to wait a little bit, and the skill will come when it comes.” – Laurie Hernandez
65) “The ultimate goal should be doing your best and enjoying it.” – Peggy Fleming
66) “The goal is to keep having fun. Not let that pressure get to me and still be Missy.” – Missy Franklin
67) “Every morning I am a beginner.” – Hanya Holm
Elevating Female Athletes
At Uplifter we believe in empowering every athlete regardless of gender. We do this by supporting coaches and administrators with automated club management software (in fact, one of our most recent software enhancements is the addition of customizable genders so that clubs can be more LGTBQI2S inclusive). Through automation, we save time for administrative teams and allow coaches to more easily track an individual athlete’s progress, class-over-class, year-over-year. The net result of these time savings and improvements means more quality time for coaches and athletes to improve their performances.
