A Quote by Kelly Clark

I'm not trying to snowboard for other people anymore. That just kind of comes with age and growing up. That's helped me a lot. Some of that started right after the last Olympics (in Vancouver).
After I lost my legs, all I wanted to do was snowboard again. I remember spending an entire year on the computer, looking for 'adaptive snowboarders' or 'snowboard legs' or 'adaptive snowboard schools' or just something that I could connect to. I already knew how to snowboard - I just needed to find the right legs.
At any age, you are growing up at some level, but as far as maturing and growing up, a lot of that happens in your 20s: a lot of mistakes still to make and insecurities. But at around 27, I started to come into my own as a real adult.
Growing up with my brothers has helped me a lot in training. I have learned a lot from them. The moves, their advice and all other stuff. I maybe the youngest, but my older brothers helped me a lot in order to achieve what they have achieved.
I started saying, 'I don't want to be crazy anymore.' I need to make some changes. And the first thing I started doing was just got all the men out of my life, because that was a big problem for me. That was a crutch, if you will. You know, trying to define yourself through other people or men, in particular.
When I started playing football, I started as a left-defender. Maybe I wasn't very talented in that position but I knew that something good could come out of it. I got some skills with my feet and that helped me a lot later on. Those qualities have helped me a lot in my career.
Anybody who gives away money is mostly looking at things where they think they can make a difference. I'm trying to help people who helped me, educational institutions that helped me with scholarships, or organizations that were very useful to me in growing up.
My upbringing in Birmingham gave me a sense of reality. I could not pick another city I would rather have grown up in. Growing up around really good, solid, godly people, it helped me to find those kind of great people in L.A., too, which can be hard for some people.
But it is nice to know that you have other races lined up, because sometimes you can get so focused on your next marathon that it can become kind of unhealthy in some ways. So it's nice to have something else to slap you in the face and say, all right, there is life after the Olympics.
I think for me, growing up as an only child, I didn't have a lot of people around me or a lot of foreign influences, so growing up, I really kind of got lost in my imagination - for the better.
A lot of people think that you have to specialize in one sport from an early age in order to turn pro. Most of my teammates played a lot of different sports when we were kids. I liked to golf, water ski and play baseball. That helped me develop other aspects of my game and made me WANT to be on the ice even more once hockey season started.
If I started drinking again, there would be a lot of people bringing me pot because I can't handle alcohol. I just am not a good drinker. I get a little alcohol in me and I start trying to change the world, and that's not good. A lot of people are the same way. So that's why I don't drink anymore.
I knew I wanted to do music at eight years of age. I listened to a lot of Motown growing up, and it got to the point where I started mimicking people - Michael Jackson or whoever. People started to notice I could hold a tone. The bug was always there.
I think growing up in Vancouver is a different lifestyle than growing up in most other places.
In my experience, when I went to school, and especially in after-school, and during breaks, a lot of people wanted to sit down and play chess up till a certain age when it was not supposed to be cool anymore and people wanted to do other things.
A lot of the problems of parenthood are universal. Yes, it's harder being younger and growing up yourself, but all those anxieties and problems are going to be faced by anyone at any age. When people hear about teenage parents and teenage pregnancy, they attribute a lot of personality traits to those individuals, which is just such a bizarre thing when you really think about it. Like, how does age and circumstance equate to some kind of personality trait?
I just make sure that people around me are fine. There is not a lot I can do anymore. Just support the people. Be with them. But at the end, I've got to go play. And after, we can talk again. But I have to kind of block it for two hours.
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