My parents couldn't handle my energy so they enrolled me in every sport the school was offering. I didn't resent it because I loved sports and picked them up easily.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
My parents wanted me to become a national athlete.
Athletics provided a life preserver for me, and that maybe kept me out of trouble. I never partied in high school. I mostly just dated.
I didn't play a great deal of sport in primary school. It was not until I went away to boarding school in Sussex that I really got into sport.
Playing sport was somewhat frivolous, but I liked it. I rebelled a little bit, and wouldn't go to music lessons and things like that, but I would go and play ball. My parents learned to love it because they saw how much I got out of it.
I got involved in athletics during physical education lessons at school.
I was lucky enough to go to a school which gave flexibility around education and sport. We had a 1-hour, 30-minute lunch break, and were able to train during this time.
Both parents supported my becoming a world class athlete.
My parents were great at making sure I got out of bed when I needed to play football on a Sunday morning and that I was ready after school to go to training on a Tuesday and Thursday. But it was never forced upon me or rammed down my throat. If it had been, I could have ended up hating sport.
They wanted me to play more sports because they were acutely sensitive to their children being one hundred percent American, and they believed that all Americans played sports and loved sports.
My athleticism was really the core to social acceptance, because in those days the overwhelming number of students came from more of a public school background than I did.
No opposing quotes found.