Top 66 Karch Kiraly Quotes

Great passing and setting – I admire that more than the super big guys pounding the ball.

Since June of 1981, between school and the national team, I haven’t had much time to spend with myself or my family.

I started on the beach in Santa Barbara with my father when I was six.

When I think of those who were the greatest in their respective sports, it was their drive for perfection that made them the best.

My mind could keep going all day long. You give me a new body, and I could go for another 20 years out here, and do it well.

I could foresee myself having some frustration in trying to help people do what I tried to do on the court and maybe having some challenges in trying to transmit that.

I never played on a court or in an actual game until I was 9.

The Latin teams have this idea that they can’t beat a good team in the same tournament twice.

Once the ball goes up, nobody’s paying attention to what we’re wearing.

I can help promote the sport best by competing better, rather than playing poorly and losing out in the tournament early.

I don’t think beyond tomorrow or the next day.

I’m very well-recognized in Japan, on a par with a rock star.

Somehow after a few vodkas, the language barrier always seems to disappear.

Playing before an enthusiastic crowd is great. It really gets you going.

I love to visit any gym or any training site of any coach in any sport.

I got to play so much more than I ever thought I would.

From the mid-’70s to the mid-’90s, that was the golden age of the beach volleyball mystique. I was absolutely mesmerized by the best players of that time.

Dealing with a newborn baby, a new language and new people can’t be easy on anyone.

I absorbed a lot from my dad. He’s very disciplined, very productive, and uses his time well. Those are all things you want when you compete.

I do not wish to be mobbed by people everywhere I go.

We don’t like to be forced off our own tour, onto foreign soil, to qualify for our Olympic teams. That’s ridiculous.

I’m very happy being able to travel freely and go anywhere I want to.

Our big hope is to get to the Olympics and win the first beach volleyball gold medal – if we can make it.

Any beach is more attractive than the inside of any stadium in the world.

There will always be people who think volleyball, at least for boys anyway, is a sport you play when you can’t letter in anything else.

Sometimes a team can be a little too rested. Then they never really snap out of it.

I love beach volleyball.

As a player competes less, I would imagine doing promotional work becomes a higher priority.

It’s more challenging on the beach. And there’s a totally different atmosphere. There’s not nearly so much protocol as indoors. It’s not so strait-laced.

It’s nice at the beach. You don’t have to wear a shirt.

The men’s game probably has a little more power to it, so the rallies aren’t quite as long. Some people prefer that power and other people prefer the somewhat-longer rallies that tend to happen in women’s volleyball.

From what I’ve heard, the Gold Crown is kind of in a class by itself. The other players tell me it’s superbly run and promoted. The money is kind of nice, too.

It tastes sweeter when you come close and suffer some really painful losses.

I can stay in the game for a long time.

I have been lucky enough to inherit the patient, loving and nurturing side from my mother, and the organizational and productive side from my dad.

I would love to be playing in Manhattan one more time.

The sand is so bright in Clearwater, you can go snow-blind. In fact, Clearwater and Brazil are the only places where I felt like passing out from heat stroke.

One of the things I thought was lost in the move to a smaller court was there were fewer smaller players. Like, you have to have a huge blocker to be able to excel, but that wasn’t always the case.

For lack of a better calling, I just figured my dad’s a doctor. He seems to enjoy what he does, so I had my eye on playing volleyball in college, maybe a tiny bit after, but then going to medical school and becoming a doctor.

For us it’s better to think of our opponents as idiots. It’s easier to play hard against someone you don’t like than it is to play against a friend.

I’ve heard every pronunciation ever, but the worst was when I was in New York for a radio show at some restaurant. On the door it said, ‘Now appearing: Kard Kiard.’

When I started playing on the beach there was nothing, no prize money at all. I didn’t expect there to be any, and I didn’t even dream there would ever be money.

Chicago is one of my favorite cities because it has great sand, weather and an enthusiastic crowd.

The regular pro tour focuses on just the very few top players. But it doesn’t focus on the other thousands of passionate volleyball players out there.

If I can help my teammate or teammates play at a level they’ve never played at before, then it doesn’t even matter so much how I play.

I really have no long-term goals.

I’ve been really lucky to come up the time I did, to live in California when I did, and to be a part of the generation of players we were and the great coaching we got. All of it really came together.

Each guy on the team had to make a decision about what life style he was going to live down the road. I made the choice to get better and more responsible.

I love being a parent, and when I’m gone even 2 1/2 days for a tournament, I’m forcing Janna to be a single parent.

I sit at the beach and I keep thinking there is something more I could be doing.

My buddies and I were just hooked on beach volleyball. We were obsessed with the game.

I take a tremendous amount of punishment and abuse every weekend because every team serves at me. So I have to carry the offensive load. I’m hitting the ball all the time.

And I really felt like I would regret never accomplishing my goals on the beach, or missing special moments with my kids, more than I would miss winning a third gold medal.

If it were easy, everybody would have a gold medal, but they don’t.

I played with my dad until I was 15.

I’m not at my physical peak, but if I can still beat guys, many of whom were born after I won my first tournament, that’s a great accomplishment.

All partnerships are doomed to die. Almost no partnership ever ended with neutrality and both people retiring at the same time.

It’s harder to improve once you’re in your 40s.

Our seasons aren’t like most sports, where the climax comes at the end. With us, the Olympics are much more important than anything else.

Here I am, 11 years old, and these grown men have to give it everything they have to beat me. In one part of my life, I was standing toe-to-toe with grown men. It was a great feeling. My dad gave me that gift and volleyball gave me that gift.

Part of the lore of the beach is how long some of those matches would last. Scores would hold and it was a battle of wits and endurance.

I guess I feel that competing well and signing all the autographs and just being available to the fans every weekend is the way I can best promote the sport.

It’s hard to grow up to be a good man and a good husband and a good father and at least at some level, my dad gave me a great gift to be able to grow up in the volleyball context and know that I was on a good path.

I don’t know if it’ll happen four years from now or 52 years from now, but our job is to make an Olympic gold medal happen at some point for the history of the U.S. program.

The actual work of reviewing, teaching and learning is human to human.

Our objective is always to do something that hasn’t been done before, but the opponent has a lot of say over how that works out.