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I was the youngest of seven kids and I would not have been able to go to college without an athletic scholarship.

I didn't get an athletics scholarship at a major school.

They didn't have college scholarships for women. Had they done that at the time, I may have stayed on for another two Olympics, but the opportunities were not available to women that they have today.

When I was in school, there was no such thing as girls' athletics.

You're not on scholarship for school, and it sounds crazy when a student-athlete says that, but that's - those are the things coaches tell them every day: 'You're not on scholarship for school.'

Women's sports is still in its infancy. The beginning of women's sports in the United States started in 1972, with the passage of Title 9 for girls to finally get athletic scholarships.

I went to the University of San Francisco on an athletic scholarship. I didn't study in high school. I was just there to get by and to play basketball. But a funny thing happened to me when I got to college. I got challenged by the work and the professors.

At 13, I was a big, totally uncoordinated, hopeless football player. I responded to somebody else's rules, and I stayed just good enough to get a scholarship to Columbia, which was looking for scholar-athletes.

My parents didn't know anything about collegiate scholarships, so they had accepted the national team training stipend, the monthly stipend that I received after making the national team, so I was ineligible for NCAA eligibility anyway.

I wanted to go to medical school. But, I never got a college scholarship.