Of course Sequocoria Mallory remembers the call. That call. How could a mother forget? That distress in her daughter's voice. The apprehension. The plea for reassurance.
Aja Evans' early ventures into bobsledding had gone so well. Until that moment in 2012 _ when she actually had to jump in the back of a sled, duck her head and speed down the winding, icy track at the Olympic Sports Complex in Lake Placid, N.Y.
For Evans, it felt like hopping into a trash can and rolling off the side of a cliff. The speed was breathtaking. The racket and the rumbling proved disorienting.
"It's loud. It's bumpy. You're hitting stuff," Evans says. "It's like all your senses are heightened. So you go into defense mode. But then you know you have to stay relaxed.
"It was so counterintuitive."
Frightening too.
So when Evans' sled finally came to a stop, she disembarked, found some privacy and called home.
About this bobsledding thing ...
"I was trying to judge the tone of her voice before I gave any advice," Mallory recalls. "And if I can hear and feel her concerns, I can see if there's a window to change whatever's bugging her."
With all that apprehension emanating through the phone, what was a mom to do but offer some encouragement and extra push?
Aja, baby, you need to go back up that hill and give it another try.
"She called it a hill," Evans says with a laugh. "I'll never forget that."
Mallory shrugs. In her mind, it was little more than the toboggan chutes she'd taken her children to at the Dan Ryan Woods when they were little. Besides, as driven as Aja was, as competitive as she has always been, how was she going to let one jarring ride scare her off from her pursuit of excellence?
Mallory knew she had to be inspirational with her rallying cry. In the back of her mind, she laughed.
She wasn't the one who was going to have to come hurtling down that slick ice.
"So I could just give my best speech, my best pep talk of all time," she said.
Off she went, first comforting Aja, then motivating her.
"With all my kids," Mallory says, "I never wanted to show fear or project fear. I'm not going to be the one to say, 'Mmmmpph. I don't know about this.' They're not going to hear that from me. Because if you do that, that might be the one little thing that changes their whole perspective.
"I just let her know, 'You go back up there and slide back down until you feel comfortable.' "
And now look at Evans, who went back to the top of that "hill," conquered her fears and kept pushing. The 29-year-old Chicago native is now preparing to compete in the Winter Olympics for the second time, the brakeman in the Team USA bobsled driven by Jamie Greubel Poser.
The two won the bronze medal four years ago at the Sochi Games and are now in South Korea with bigger dreams. The women's bobsled competition begins Feb. 20 in Pyeongchang. And these days Evans has nothing but eagerness and adrenaline for what's ahead.
