Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The biggest thing for me is keeping my hair moisturized. My go-tos are the Pantene Gold Series Hydrating Butter Cream and Intense Hydrating Oil.
You get this feeling in bobsled, like a combination of excitement, anxiety, and pure nervousness, and you get that combination only very few times.
I'm not big on protein shakes - I think they're pretty gross, actually - so I have to make sure I eat enough meat, fish, and other good protein sources.
Bobsledding is like sprinting with NASCAR. You get to push these 400-pound sleds as fast as you can down a hill and hop in. How could you not enjoy that?
My dad was a Marine, my aunt is still in the Navy, and my grandfathers both served. So, it's a huge honor for me to represent my country in any way I can.
Most people watch a game because they're excited about it; I'll sit there and watch lacrosse championships to try to find a female who could be a bobsledder.
It's important that the Olympics are motivating to young people and inspiring to all, and the only way to do that is to ensure clean performances, free of cheating.
I'm a representative of something that's greater than myself. I'm not just representing myself or my country: I'm representing Christ and what He's done through me.
Our sport is one of the few on the winter side that is so diverse. It shows we don't have to be limited by race or gender or whatever and how far we have come as a sport.
View a stumbling block as a learning opportunity. If you allow it to defeat you, it will. Honestly, if I give everything I have, I can't be disappointed with the outcome.
I think the hardest thing is that all of us would love to just stick to sports - but if you want us to be role models to kids, then you need to stand for more than just sports.
People win medals in all shapes and sizes! And I can't help but say that finding a fiance who loves me unconditionally at any size has played a huge role in my body confidence.
After giving up softball, I didn't know what I was going to do. I thought I would try bobsled, but I wasn't really sure what would happen. I thought my athletic career was over.
I went to college, George Washington University, and played softball there. I also played professionally but with the real goal of being an Olympian and making the Olympic team.
I love who I am. But being a woman competing in a male-dominated sport and always trying to push the envelope as a female athlete, you get a lot of comparisons to men and things like that.
There's not really much of an opportunity for a girl from Georgia like me or a girl like Aja (Evans) from Chicago to grow up bobsledding. I think it's great that we have such a diverse group.
It's a challenge, but every single German or Canadian I want to beat, I still have to love them. That means competing the way God wants me to compete and helping my opponents if they have a need.
There is a stigma in our sport that men are the better drivers. People think that, because the men compete in two-man and four-man, they are more versatile and that the women aren't great drivers.
I train with track athletes, which is weird for bobsledders. I love training with track athletes because they help me work on my speed, and they give me something to cheer for during the Summer Olympics.
There is the potential for dreams to come true, for records to be broken, and medals to be won, and at this time everyone believes that they individually have the potential to make their dream a reality.
Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right. Just shows you how powerful beliefs are and how you have the ability to change your situation and affect what happens to you. The mind is a powerful thing.
Growing up, most girls have this image of how they want their wedding to be and things like that. I had none of that except for the cake I wanted, and that's what I got. The cake was the first thing we ordered.
My dad was a football player, and I've been the same size since eighth grade, so I get how it can be hard when you don't fit in with the 'normal-size' girls, or your butt and legs are too big for normal-size jeans.
Anytime you hit a curve, or you hit on the side of the wall, you hit against the side of the sled. We're taking four to five, sometimes six or seven Gs on our body every time we go down the track. And then the crashing.
There's times when I'll be out in the middle of the track, standing in the curve, and I'll just laugh. 'What the heck am I doing right now? I'm sliding down the hill at crazy speeds and standing in freezing cold weather.'
I really, really wanted to be an Olympian. My parents knew about this dream of mine, and they suggested I try my hand at bobsled. They'd seen it on TV at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002 and thought it would be a good sport for me.
Yeah, no one really grows up competing in the bobsled. You have to be 16 years old before you can even drive one. And there are really only two places in the country where you can bobsled - Park City, Utah, and Lake Placid, New York.
I grew up in Douglasville, Georgia. My father played football for the Atlanta Falcons. We lived a bunch of places when I was younger. I was born in California. We lived in Chicago for a little bit, and finally, we ended up in Georgia.
We train six days a week, and each day includes some type of running or strength workout. It's all about getting functionally stronger in the positions that matter for racing, which means balancing the strength between my quads and hamstrings.
Traditionally, the treatment for a concussion has been to stare at a wall and wait for your brain to heal itself. Don't watch TV, don't read a book, don't look at your phone, and definitely don't train. It's a torturous protocol for an athlete.
I know how much my mom has impacted my journey and how much I wouldn't be where I am without my mom. As much as she says she's proud of me, I'm even more so proud of her because of what she's done and how she's been able to raise me and my sisters.
[At nine years old] I didn't really know what that meant at the time. I thought it might be in a warm summer sport like softball, but I played a variety of sports growing up - basketball, soccer and track. I really didn't care. I just wanted to be an Olympian.
I've been in plenty of crashes! Some are not too bad - resulting in ice burn. Others are pretty rough, and sometimes - rarely, but sometimes - people do get seriously injured. It's a risk we all know of and accept. If you bobsled, you're going to crash - guaranteed.
Being southern and doing bobsled was difficult from the standpoint that I had no idea how to handle the cold and how to dress in the cold, let alone warm up and compete in the cold - so it was a definite shock. I didn't even own a coat when I first started bobsledding!
I got a letter from a mom, and she was telling me about how her daughter is a tomboy and the trouble she has in classes and being around boys. She herself had the same kinds of problems growing up and how inspired they were by me. That was such an incredible email to receive.
I'm not sure I'll ever love softball as much as bobsled. It's like having children: you don't love one more than the other, you just love them differently, and that's how my love for softball is vs. my love of bobsled - two totally different sports with different personalities.
As Christians, we're asked to give. In my sport, if someone needs equipment or help with something, regardless of who they are as a competitor, I'm called to help them for a higher purpose. So it definitely affects everything I do. It's not easy. It's very hard to love everyone.
For most people, they only thing they know about bobsled is 'Cool Runnings.' Well, 'Cool Runnings' was, of course, four men in a bobsled, and four-man is considered the highlight of our sport. It's what everybody knows. It's what everybody watches. And it's the big dog of our sport.
I know that God is working through me within this sport. I know He's put me here for a purpose and it's not just to win medals. Winning is great and hopefully it gives me a platform to spread His love and spread His Word, but at the end of the day, I'm called to do what He wants me to do.
Having my dad play for the Falcons, what it did was really to expose me to a whole bunch of other elite-level athletes, which I think gives me an advantage and allowed me to understand what goes into sports. It is more than going out onto the field and going out onto the ice and competing.
If you've seen 'Cool Runnings,' it looks pretty easy. You're just riding in a sled, right? Not exactly. Bobsled actually involves a series of complex movements that aren't like those in any other sport. You put your body into a really awkward position to push a 400-pound sled downhill on ice.
If I'm honest, the thing I remember the most was the team mascot, Freddie the Falcon. I really remember there was a McDonald's nearby, and I remember eating a cheeseburger in the playground when the Falcon appeared. I'm not sure my dad appreciates that being my favorite memory of him playing.
I was baptized Episcopalian when I was maybe two years old and we went to an Episcopalian church. When we moved to Georgia, we started going to a Lutheran church and I fell in love with the church there - Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd in Douglasville, Georgia. I really have a home there.
It's one of the greatest honors I could ever imagine - to be able to represent my country and to be able to wear "USA" on my back. It's an incredible honor. It's an accomplishment of the past four year but of a life of dreaming and working hard and doing everything I can in pursuit of this goal.
I was still in the college and they told me I should try it. At the time, I still thought I was going to be an Olympic softball player. But later, when I retired from softball in 2007, I decided to give bobsled a try. I emailed the coach and got invited to Lake Placid for a tryout and I never left.
Even though concussions affect women more often than men, there's not a lot of concussion research about women specifically. You can slip and fall and hit your head and have a concussion. And unless you know what to do, and unless you're able to take the right steps, you may not be able to recover.
It's a huge testament to those around me - my friends, my family and everyone who supported me. Without their help, I couldn't have made it here. It's been an amazing journey. But we are here for a higher purpose There's a reason that God has for each of us in the sport. It's all about serving His purpose.
I'm a representative of something that's greater than myself. When you see me out there on the track, I'm not just representing myself or my country, I'm representing Christ and what He's done through me. I have a responsibility to show His love and show others what He's done for me. It's also freed me up.
My father's NFL dreams never really felt like motivation to me, but it was something to aspire to. He was such a great athlete, the least I could do is try and use my athletic talent to represent my country in a different way. He represented as a Marine. Maybe I could do something to represent as an athlete.
I played softball at George Washington University, and then I played professionally for the Mid-Michigan Ice. I had a couple of tryouts with the U.S. Olympic Team, but I don't know if I have a word to describe how bad one of the tryouts was. It was the worst tryout in the history of tryouts. It was that bad.