Local Olympic athlete Chari Hawkins: ‘I’m valuable, I’m worthy, I’m having fun’
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REXBURG — She is Rexburg homegrown, a wife, the most decorated female athlete to ever graduate from Utah State University and an Olympic heptathlete. Chari Hawkins has had a full athletic journey with hardships and successes, and she is sharing the lessons she’s learned along the way.
“I always tell people who really want to be an Olympian — I don’t care how old you are. I say that it takes two things, it takes being healthy and it takes never giving up,” Hawkins said. “And that’s kind of it … if you want to add a third thing, you, kind of, need to know what you want to do.”
Thirty-three-year-old Hawkins has always had dreams of making it to the Olympics, even after she’d competed on a world stage four times. During the times of the pandemic in 2021, when Hawkins’ hopes of qualifying for the Olympics were high, she didn’t qualify for the Tokyo Olympic team. Although she experienced a personal set back, the athlete says she let her anxiety fuel her.
“I think I was in a space of, ‘Holy smokes. I’m never going to be able to say I was an Olympian,’” she said. “It’s very interesting, because again, how I say my anxiety brought me to the Olympics, not making the Tokyo team made me so much better because I had so much more to push for. I hope that people can see that times that they maybe don’t get what they want might be exactly what they need to get to them truly to their fullest potential.”
After pushing through for a few more years, she continued to improve until her Olympic dreams became a reality. Hawkins took 2nd in the Women’s Heptathlon at the Olympic Qualifiers in Eugene Oregon, and was officially on Team USA for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. She says when she first arrived in Paris the energy was palpable.
“It was pretty electric,” Hawkins said. “Throughout the city, there was a buzz. Throughout the Olympic Village, there was a buzz. … That stuff is contagious. So your energy is just on 10 at all times.”
She had high hopes of a stellar performance but, as fate would have it, some heartbreaking mishaps and behind-the-scenes chaos left her scoring at the bottom of the pack.
During the heptathlon, there are seven events: 100 meters hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200 meters, long jump, javelin throw and 800 meters.
After the 100-meter hurdles, Hawkins had placed 5th in that event out of 22 athletes. When she moved on to the high jump, a strong event for Hawkins, she received an NM or ‘no mark’ which means the athlete is awarded no points in that event after all attempts are unsuccessful. She passed on the opening five heights and failed to clear the bar at 1.71 meters (5.61 feet) in three attempts, a height she says she’s never missed — in fact she recently released a video demonstration clearing the height.
“That was a bar that I can clear from a short approach — easily clear from a short approach. Actually, I had a great warm-up. I didn’t miss a bar in warm-ups,” Hawkins said.
With the pressure of an Olympic stage, Murphy’s Law took effect, and everything that could go wrong did.
“There’s two high jump mats and they had a screen on each mat that they had switched and I was looking at the wrong board,” Hawkins said.
Because of the chaos behind the scenes, Hawkins says she wasn’t informed of who was on deck or of her turn in the rotation of athletes.
“I thought I still had three bars to go, and all of a sudden one of my teammates came up and said, ‘Chari you’re up. You gotta go girl, right now,'” Hawkins said.
In that moment of adrenaline, Hawkins took off the outer layer of her gear and went for it.
“I think with all that extra adrenaline I overran my mark and hit the bar,” Hawkins said. “I hate telling that story because it makes it seem like it was this excuse. It was a very chaotic thing for me specifically. As an athlete, it is my job to make sure that I’m aware of everything that’s going on, and with such a chaotic environment that’s what happened. … Even with chaos, I can clear that bar, I didn’t clear the bar, I had to face to consequences, which means you get a zero in the high jump.”
Hawkins says because the high jump is such a high-scoring event, it took a lot of points off of her overall score pushing her to the bottom of the rankings. Even with this hardship, Hawkins decided to stay and finish her last five events.
“I took into account all of the people that came to watch me compete. … The 30 people that came, they didn’t come so that they could watch me win a medal, they came to watch me compete at the Olympics and so I did it for them. For all of the people who were cheering me on from all over the world, they were so proud of me for being on the Olympic stage, I did it for them,” she said. “I had five more opportunities to be on an Olympic stage that dang near nobody gets.”
Hawkins said, she didn’t want to be a ‘bummer’ for her teammates and family and that she wanted to go out with her whole heart and continue to bring everybody up.
“I will say it was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done because I’ve never been in the middle of grieving while also having to step out and be the best version of me,” she said.
Throughout her athletic career, Hawkins has experienced many hardships and had formerly attached her value to her competitive performances. Her personal mantra, she explained, when she’s faced adversity in sports is, “I’m worthy, I’m valuable, I’m having fun, and this doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things.”
“I really have learned a lot about Paris and my journey is a lot of people who have told me that my being able to come back through hardship like that really resonated with them and what they’re going through and that’s what’s so special about sports sometimes, is that it can give us such life lessons,” Hawkins said.
Post-Olympics, Hawkins says she and her husband C.J. O’Neal haven’t made a decision about continuing with track for another season. The couple never commits to more than one season at a time, she explained.
Hawkins says she is looking forward to the Utah State Homecoming football game on Oct. 11, and to continuing to share her stories, speaking events, and maybe a potential book to come out in 2025.
“Right now, it’s just about seeing friends and eating food that I’m not allowed to have, really, and all of that kind of stuff, all of the fun stuff,” she said. “Then we’ll make that decision when the time comes.”
Follow Hawkins on her social media platforms pages — Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok.