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REMARKS BY:	DONNA E. SHALALA, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
PLACE:		Reception For 1999 Women's World Cup Soccer Team
DATE:		SEPTEMBER 23, 1998

1999 Women's World Cup

It's an honor to welcome the Women's National Soccer Team and the Women's World Cup organizers. And it's an honor to have these remarkable women on our team. For the past two years, these athletes have given their names, their time and their hearts to help my Department's "Smoke-Free Kids and Soccer" program. Their devotion is exactly what F. Scott Fitzgerald meant when he defined America as "a willingness of the heart." They have reached the top of their sport by giving everything they've got -- training and touring, practicing and playing. But somehow, they've found a way to give a little more.

By their efforts and personal example, they encourage girls and boys to get off the sofa, take up soccer and put down cigarettes. They bring our smoke-free message to millions of their young fans in schools, soccer leagues, community groups and summer camps. And they show young people what the smoke-free life is all about. It's about giving your best and never giving up. It's about maintaining strong legs and powerful lungs. It's about keeping a strong inner voice that says, "smoking is not glamorous -- athletes are." It's about hearing the voice of our champion mid-fielder, Julie Foudy, who says, "We'd much rather smoke a defender than a cigarette."

The Women's National Team are Olympic Gold world-class champions because they never quit. As long as teenage smoking remains a national tragedy, the Clinton-Gore Administration will never quit in our commitment to protect our children from tobacco. By lending their voice to our Smoke-Free Kids and Soccer program, the National Women's Team are champions times two. Champions on the soccer fields. And champions for our children and their field of dreams.

On the eve of the Atlanta Olympic games two years ago, we launched our Smoke-Free Kids and Soccer program with a poster featuring the Women's National Team. And everywhere the team went to play, the poster went up in children's homes. Today, I am proud to unveil the newest poster in our campaign. It was developed by our National Cancer Institute, and copies will be distributed throughout the country. And right now, I am pleased to present this poster to these amazing athletes who bring the smoke-free message to our children. I know they'll bring the World Cup soccer trophy to our country.

Now I have the additional honor today of introducing another champion. A two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner in swimming, the first time in 1960, in Rome, at the age of 13. A major force behind the passage of Title 9 and the founder of the Women in Sports Foundation. And an Emmy-winning sportscaster for ABC. Sounds like I'm introducing several people, doesn't it? But when someone said, "those who can do it well, do it all," they could have been talking about our next speaker. She's the Chair of the 1999 Women's World Cup Organizing Committee -- Donna de Varona.

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