History Main / PassionateSportsGirl

* Hikari Kamijou from ''Manga/HikariNoDensetsu'', who adores gymnastics and was inspired by RealLife Bulgarian athlete Diliana Georgieva to be one.

** In ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'', [[HandicappedBadass Toph]] competes in underground Earthbending tournaments (think Earthbending mixed with pro-wrestling) and loves every minute of it. She's also the undefeated champion for ''several years'' by that point, and she's only 12 when we meet her.
** Korra, the title character from ''WesternAnimation/TheLegendOfKorra'', loves "[[FictionalSport Pro-Bending]]" so much that she [[JumpedAtTheCall joined a pro-bending team]] when the opportunity to do so presented itself. She’s also excited to get Toph’s grandsons, Wei and Wing, to teach her how to play their metalbending game when she learns how to do it.

** Rainbow Dash is a tomboy who excels at flying and dreams of joining the Wonderbolts, an elite stunt flying/rescue team. She eventually does join the Wonderbolts in a later season.

* ''VideoGame/RivalSchools'': Natsu Ayuhara is the captain of Gorin High's all-girl volleyball team and a strong swimmer. The ending of the UsefulNotes/PlayStation version even shows her [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77PXVfkeDGY&feature=related spear fishing (0:22).]] Her teammates all [[CoolBigSis look up to her]] and consider her a role model.
* In all of the sports spin-offs of ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' where she's playable (such as ''Mario Tennis'', ''Mario Golf'', ''Mario Strikers'' and even the Olympics crossover games), [[TomboyPrincess Princess Daisy]] qualifies as this trope. She's always confident and upbeat when it comes to playing and gets overly excited when winning. Following her first playable appearance in ''VideoGame/MarioTennis'' for UsefulNotes/Nintendo64, Daisy has become a recurring playable character in almost every ''Mario'' sports game since.

The Passionate Sports Girl can put the JerkJock in his place by beating him at his own sport, and also protects the NonActionGuy from the JerkJock as well. She can vary from being a sweet and shy yet diligent player, to being a dark personality who just wants to play football. The specific sport she pursues is often dependent on personality; {{tomboy}}s generally prefer more aggressive sports like soccer, basketball, swimming, martial arts, baseball and softball, whereas {{girly girl}}s generally prefer tennis, ice skating, gymnastics, cheerleading and volleyball.

You can tell that she is passionate because this girl lives for one sport at which she excels, or perhaps for any opportunity to show her strength, despite what anyone else thinks. In the first case, if it's a traditionally male sport, her desire to prove herself could lead to SweetPollyOliver as she attempts to get on an all boy team. If she plays a variety of sports then she's more likely to be the GirlNextDoor. If it's a boys' team then it's YouGoGirl.

She is also a more accessible LoveInterest for the hero, since he can get to know her better by playing sports with her. There is a bit of WishFulfillment here for both the guys (who want a girlfriend they can talk about sports with) and the girls (who want to associate themselves more easily with sporty guys). Making sports her priority can [[NoGuyWantsAnAmazon be intimidating]] or [[AmazonChaser relatable and/or attractive]] depending on the setting and the characters within it.

Depending on the sport she plays, she may or may not be a StatuesqueStunner and/or AmazonianBeauty if meant to be attractive. The first is common with girls that play basketball and volleyball, while the other is most common in martial artists.

* There's also ''Manga/AttackNumberOne'', where secondary TropeCodifier Kozue Ayuhara is the heroine, who transfers to Fujimi college and impresses the volleyball coach when she tries out. After making friends and enemies, the story highlights her struggles and triumphs as she matures and tries her hardest to become the best volleyball player in the school, Japan and the world.

** Ran Mouri is pretty serious about her karate, and is good enough at it to have a rather high national score.
** Hina Wada is also a karateka, is just as serious about it, and considers herself as Ran's rival.
** Momiji Ooka is a champion in the ''hyakunin issha karuta'' card game, and the 21th movie has her and Kazuha competing against one another for the first place in a very prestigious tournament [[spoiler: and for Heiji Hattori's heart, since Kazuha may be his PatientChildhoodLoveInterest but Momiji claims that he gave her a ChildhoodMarriagePromise years ago. (It turns out [[AccidentalMarriage he promised her something else]]).]]

* ''Anime/HungryHeartWildStriker'' has Kyousuke's prospect girlfriend, Miki Tsujiwaki, who is the captain of her school's female soccer team, and the story kicks off when she basically ropes Kyousuke into coaching her team. It's thanks to Miki's passion for the sport that Kyousuke, who once played soccer too but left it due to personal problems, decided to restart playing.

** There are other girls in this series who also want to become sportswomen, specially either horse riders or tennis players. With a good reason: the school offers a beautiful prize named the ''Lady's Crest'' to the student that brings the most honour to the school, and all of them want it. So Lynn finds several rivals in her path like Vivian Spencer, Sophie Montgomery, Catherine and [[spoiler: Mary Waverly.]]
* Suzuka Tsukimura in ''Franchise/LyricalNanoha'' is usually a ShrinkingViolet and a girly girl. However, when it comes to team sports (such as dodgeball), her passion and skill surprises everyone. In a supplementary manga, she manages to catch a ball thrown by Fate and hit Fate with it mid-air. For the record, Fate is a mage who specializes in Mach 2+ aerial combat, and Suzuka is a muggle.
* In ''Anime/MahouTsukaiChappy'', Chappy befriends [[BrokenBird a sad and troubled older girl]] named Katie Klein who is a professional ice skater, but is losing her self-confidence after failing to pull a VERY difficult routine. [[note]](Which is basically the famous [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_(figure_skating) Quad]], a sequence [[DifficultButAwesome already very hard to pull]] in RealLife for skaters of either gender and, at [[TheSeventies the time]] of ''Chappy's'' airing, ''still'' not performed by any competitors in official tournaments; that wouldn't happen until 1988.)[[/note]] Chappy decides to help Katie regain her strength and finally nail the routine in time for a tournament. [[spoiler: They succeed.]]
* ''Manga/MajorSecond'': In the first season, Mutsuko Sakura once she is encouraged to join the Dolphins, while Michiru Maruyama is the ace pitcher for the main rival team. Lead character Daigo Shigeno's older sister Izumi is captain of her junior high baseball team, although we don't see as much of her, and even Daigo's mother Kaoru is no slouch at baseball. In the second season, two thirds of Daigo's junior high baseball team are girls, most unusual for a male-led sports manga.
* Miki Koishikawa and Arimi Suzuki from ''Manga/MarmaladeBoy''. Miki is in Toryo High's tennis team, while Arimi is in her own school's track team. We even get to see Miki play and win some matches in the early parts of the story, and Arimi is seen training in the scene when [[spoiler: Ginta visits her in her school, as {{foreshadowing}} of how they'll end up falling for each other.]].
* ''Anime/MischievousTwinsTheTalesOfStClares'': HotBlooded {{tomboy}} Patricia was TheAce at lacrosse at her old school, and loves playing in Belinda's team. [[spoiler: Belinda even asks Pat to take over as the Team Captain when she leaves.]]

** Homare/Cure Etoile from ''Anime/HugttoPrettyCure'' used to be a skilled figure skater with a lot of potential until she had a CareerEndingInjury before the anime begins. Though she was traumatized by her injury even after it healed, she regains her passion after becoming Cure Etoile and with help from her friends.
* ''Anime/PrincessNine'' is a good example of a show who has a lot of female athletes, some of whom fit this trope perfectly and some who don't. Ryo, Hikaru, and Koharu seem to fit, while the rest of the team doesn't, with Yoko being an outright subversion because she isn't really into baseball, or sports in general, but is on the team to get attention for her modeling career.

** Subverted by Sakuno Ryuzaki, who started playing to get closer to Ryoma, but is still a ShrinkingViolet. Though it's played straighter in the manga: she ''does'' have what it takes, improves relatively fast, and in one of the fanbooks [[http://fanbook.livejournal.com/28518.html she actually gets third place in a local tournament]] ''less than a a year before she started playing''.
* ''Manga/TheQuintessentialQuintuplets'': Yotsuba Nakano, the fourth amongst the titular quintuplets, also the most athletic of them. Both the basketball and track teams want her to join full time.

** Haruka/Uranus plays this straighter ([[{{Pun}} so to say]]) and her specialities are racing and field running.
** Two characters of the day in the [[Anime/SailorMoon original anime]] are sports women: Haruka's FriendlyRival Elsa Gray in the S season (track TeenGenius [[spoiler:who actually introduced Haruka to her future [[BattleCouple partner and girlfriend]], ElegantClassicalMusician Michiru/Neptune]]) and LovableAlphaBitch Sonoko Iijyuin (captain of the softball team) from the Stars season. Elsa actually tried to recruit Minako for her school and their track team, as she had noticed she was ''that'' fast.
* ''Manga/ShinshunkiMimanOkotowari'' has Asuka Higuchi, who is very athletic and wants to be a PE school teacher. She becomes a member of her school's gymnastics club, and even gains a rival in the gym club captain Youko Kamiya.
* Subverted by Hitomi Kanzaki from ''Anime/TheVisionOfEscaflowne'', as it's hinted that she joined her school's track team because she had a huge crush on the team captain Susumu Amano and wanted to spend time with him before he left to the USA to become a pro. Her running skills ''do'' come handy later in the story, though, when she runs like she has never done it before to [[DivingSave save Van]] from being killed by Dilandau.

* In ''Manga/YubisakiMilkTea'', Hidari Morii like playing soccer and is skilled as well so when her clasmate Yori Hotta is founding a girl soccer team she is promptly asked to join which she does. Meanwhile Toko Nogi is the captain and The Ace of her high school basketball team. All three girls however have the same problem: other people have a hard time keeping up with their talents and ambitions, in sport as well as love.

* Peppermint Patty from ''ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}}'' is like this. An admitted {{Tomboy}}, she not only manages her own sandlot baseball team, but ''loves'' to play football, even in the rain (possibly ''especially'' in the rain). There was a brief storyline where she started associating this with the feminist movement, but eventually, she started to just do it for fun. Unfortunately, her bookworm friend Marcie doesn't share her appreciation for it much.

--> They may not be too bright.

* ''Fanfic/DanganronpaMementoMori'': Kozue Sumiyoshi is the Ultimate Volleyball Player, and displays a lot of enthusiasm for her sport. [[ShoutOutThemeNaming Fittingly, she is named after]] both Kozue Ayuhara from ''Manga/AttackNumberOne'' and Nobara Sumiyoshi from ''Crimson Hero''.
* Chloe Cerise in ''Fanfic/InfinityTrainBlossomingTrail'' loves softball, stating that she loves the thrill of being up at bat. It's revealed that she practice since she was eight with her father and she translates her skill into her donut holer, Cheshire.

* In ''Fanfic/RealityIsFluid'' and ''All's Fair In Love And War'', we learn that Kanril Eleya is a fan of both springball and baseball, specifically of players and teams from her home province Kendra. In the latter story her new father-in-law jokingly tells her and Gaarra to get an annulment: "I will not have my grandchildren rooting for the Warriors!"

* ''WesternAnimation/InsideOut'': Riley is a pre-teen girl from Minnesota who's extremely passionate about playing hockey. Her love for hockey is one of her personality islands [[spoiler: that becomes a plot point later on when her inability to perform well during San Francisco tryouts and subsequent rage-quit triggers the breakdown of the island, signifying her further slippage into depression]]. Both of her parents actively encourage her involvement in the sport with [[AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents unbridled enthusiasm]].

* A passion for soccer is the common bond for the girls in ''Film/BendItLikeBeckham'', covering not only the leads, but their teammates and rivals.
* Erin Clavelli in ''Film/ByTheSword'', she starts off as rather subpar, but under Suba's training, is able to beat Villard's star pupil Jim Trebor in a competition bout.

* ''Film/ChaletGirl'': Kim is one since she was a little child, being a skate boarding champion when she was eleven, but had to quit her sport career due to her mother's death. During the movie she reignites her passion and picks up snowboarding.

* In ''Literature/GirlsKingdom'', Minako Torano is a brilliant and dedicated volleyball player, stated to be world class, and loving every second of it. She trains hard every day to get better and better. During the story, two decidedly non-athletic types challenge her to get her to agree to a sponsorship deal with a fourth character, and it goes about how you would expect. When one of them tries to catch her serve with one outstretched arm, it nearly breaks said arm, at which point Minako calls it off, because she doesn't want to hurt them.

* Jane Vaughan of ''Series/{{Degrassi|TheNextGeneration}}'' just wants to play football despite the harassment from her team mates. She's good, too.

** Artemis is absolutely devoted to playing football, excelling even against boys who outweight her quite a bit. She's also a JerkJock about it, and encouraged by her parents all the way (since both have the same attitude plus a history in sports).
** To a lesser extent, Courtney herself when it comes to gymnastics. She has several gymnastics trophies throughout her room, and is pretty bummed to learn that the high school she's transferring to no longer has a gymnastics team.

* ''Series/OddSquad'': Olive absolutely loves any and all sports, especially when it concerns her favorite team, the Burly Bears. When she gets a chance to play basketball for the Bears in "Bad Luck Bears", she's initially doubtful before deciding to go for it, and ends up securing a win for the Bears against the opposing team, the Rambunctious Rams. She even won the O Games back in 2013, one year before the events of the episode "The O Games".

* Jemimah from ''Roleplay/DawnOfANewAgeOldportBlues'' is a DumbJock that lives and breathes judo, a passion she [[LikeParentLikeChild inherited]] from her mother. Her dream is to become the world judo champion and to have her own dojo.

* In all of the sports spin-offs of ''Franchise/SuperMarioBros'' where she's playable (such as ''Mario Tennis'', ''Mario Golf'', ''Mario Strikers'' and even the Olympics crossover games), [[TomboyPrincess Princess Daisy]] qualifies as this trope. She's always confident and upbeat when it comes to playing, and gets overly excited when winning. Following her first playable appearance in ''VideoGame/MarioTennis'' for UsefulNotes/Nintendo64, Daisy has become a recurring playable character in almost every ''Mario'' sports game since.

** Hisao's prospect love interest Emi Ibarazaki is the star runner on her school's track team... despite ''having lost her legs and running with special prosthetics''.

** Nanami is also a sportwoman, good enough to be a ScholarshipStudent.

* Chiemi Fujimoto of ''VisualNovel/TrueLoveJunaiMonogatari'' is both one of the love interests and the captain of the girl's swimming club in the PlayerCharacter's school. Two specific moments in her route are related to sports: the PC can find her jogging at some point and they have a cute talk (and he finds out that [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes she loathes bugs]]), and the other happens when [[spoiler: they have a swimming competition, she rescues him from drowning, and then have a tryst in a small island localted near the harbor.]]

* Patti Mayonnaise in ''WesternAnimation/{{Doug}}'' is a passionate athlete, playing sports such as track, basketball, baseball (to a point where [[BaseballEpisode two episodes titled "Doug Out In Left Field" and "Doug On First"]] [[ADayInTheLimelight revolved around her]]), and of course, Beet Ball. The only sport she doesn't seem to be good at (and in which Doug is better than her at) is bowling.

* Lynn Loud Jr. from ''WesternAnimation/TheLoudHouse'' is probably the most prominent example of this trope in animation of TheNewTens. She's played on teams for football, lacrosse, ice hockey, baseball, basketball, and roller derby, and has won championship games in all of them ([[spoiler:except basketball]]). She even has various pre-game rituals for good luck. Additionally, she's a huge fan of Mexican wrestling and loves practicing it herself, and has also stated that she's waiting for air hockey to become recognized as an Olympic sport. Unusually for a female, she's a DumbJock and also a bit of a JerkJock (she's quick to turn anything into a competition or use physical force to get her way), though [[LovableJock she's still portrayed as sympathetically]] as the rest of her siblings.

* Sandy Cheeks of ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' takes "extreme sports" to a whole new level. Favorite past times include cycling through the ''industrial'' park and finding a hay in a pin stack.

* Zeke's crush Maxine in ''WesternAnimation/ZekesPad''. She is on the relay team, loves skateboarding, and camping and hiking. In "Gender Render", it is revealed that she she gets up at 5 a.m. every day to train.

* Hikari Kamijou from ''Manga/HikariNoDensetsu'', who adores gymnastics.

** There are other girls in this series who also want to become sportswomen, specially either horse riders or tennis players. With a good reason: the school offers a beautiful prize named the ''Lady's Crest'' to the best sports girl in campus, and all of them want it. So Lynn finds several rivals in her path like Vivian Spencer, Sophie Montgomery, Catherine and [[spoiler: Mary Warbaugh.]]

* In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' of Creator/AAPessimal, the Assassins' Guild School elevates sport to a level where the trainee Assassin is expected to deploy all their skills in the pursuit of victory. Well, ''almost'' all. Competitive running races in track and field - normally bloodless - become something of a passion to Mariella Smith-Rhodes, a distance runner who finds herself fighting battles with an equally gifted peer which become to-the-wire duels of their wits, enduarance, and ability to read a situation. To her surprise, Mariella finds that she passionately cares about winning. Her [[DarkestAfrica Howondalandian]] nemesis feels the same way too. [[note]]Mariella and her rival Sissi are Expies of African long-distance endurance runners, one - styled on the controversial Zola Budd - from the Discworld's UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica and one from its UsefulNotes/{{Kenya}}. As White Howondaland is stuck in TheApartheidEra and the neighbouring Black Howondalandian country is its deadly sworn enemy, the races also take on a political prestige. The two girls simply care about ''running'', despite what their elders think.[[/note]]

* ''Anime/HungryHeartWildStriker'' has Kyousuke's prospect girlfriend, Miki Tsujiwaki, who is the captain of her school's female soccer team, and the story [[JustForPun kicks off]] when she basically ropes Kyousuke into coaching her team. It's thanks to Miki's passion for the sport that Kyousuke, who once played soccer too but left it due to personal problems, decided to restart playing.