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Jared Dawkins’ first year at Washington University was all that he could ask for as he headed to the 2024 UAA Outdoor Track & Field Championships at Carnegie Mellon University in late April. The Ervin Scholars Program recipient was enjoying his academic and social experience, while rapidly improving as a jumper on the Bears’ track & field team.
“Freshman year was going well. It was a huge transition for me and the classes were challenging but good. I had a hamstring injury or two but being on the team was fun. I was building a great community, and it was a great break from academics,” he stated.
“You don’t know how good someone is until you see them. It became evident early on that Jared was going to be good,” remarked Tommy Davis, who coached Dawkins as a WashU assistant coach in 2023-24 and now works for BT Exceleration. “We saw some pretty impressive improvements quickly. He was very well-liked among his peers and always ready to do whatever needed to be done. As a coach, I was thoroughly impressed with what he could, and will, do.”
The injury
Dawkins stood tied for second in the triple jump (13.96 meters) at the UAA championship with hopes that his next jump would give him a personal best and bring him closer to qualifying for the Ƶ Division III Outdoor Track & Field Championships. His freshman year and life took a dramatic turn when he landed wrong on his approach and suffered a catastrophic and alarming injury, breaking his femur.
“I ripped off my tape and my watch and just started running as fast as I could. I took the first jump and suddenly I was on the ground,” he recalled. “I couldn’t sit up and then saw that my left leg was bent all the way to the left.”
Neither Dawkins nor Davis has watched the video of the injury. “I was right there when it happened, and it was like the crack of a whip. It was scary,” Davis commented.
Being his first meet back from a hamstring injury, he already had some moderate pain before the jump but not related to what just happened. “I didn’t know the severity at first. I thought I had twisted my ankle or maybe dislocated my knee, but I had no idea it was a complete fracture of my femur. I wasn’t in too much pain. It was just a huge shock. My teammates were super helpful and kept me calm. I was not looking down and trying to keep my mind off it,” he communicated.
The aftermath
Dawkins only told his parents he would be at a track meet without any details. They discovered he was in Pittsburgh when they got the call about the injury and flew from Chicago to be with him, arriving about 2 a.m.
His surgery was the day after the injury. “Initially the doctors thought I had bone cancer, and we didn’t know until after the surgery that it wasn’t. If it had been cancer, I would have needed another surgery there to address that,” he said. He spent two days in and out of sleep recovering and resting before flying back home to Chicago.
His recovery included working a full-time internship while navigating life with a walker and crutches. “My rehab was a journey and was going well at first, but then I got stuck and we didn’t know why,” he explained. “My doctor realized that my left femur was two inches shorter than my right femur (because of the first surgery) and I was standing crookedly. I found that out on July 3rd, the day before my birthday, and that led to two more surgeries. It is still a process to this day. My sophomore year is not going the way I thought it would go!’
Road to recovery/UAA support
“I cried for a minute and then picked myself back up,” acknowledged Dawkins, whose latest surgery was in early August, a little of a week before returning to campus. “I originally was navigating campus without bearing weight on crutches and using a magnet three times a day. It was a super big magnet, the size of a shoe box, so I had to keep it in my dorm and return to my room regularly throughout the day.” The magnet served to help lengthen the shorter femur.
Despite the roadblocks, Dawkins kept moving forward. “I took 20 credits in the fall and shifted my role with the track team to being a recruiting ambassador. I hosted dinners and helped recruits learn more about WashU and the track & field program,” he described. “It was a huge change for me not being on the track consistently.”
By mid-November, he started walking again after a lot of rehabilitation and doctor’s appointments. As he neared winter break, he started rehabbing harder. “By that time, I was doing something every day. I started with 70 percent body weight on the treadmill, doing plyometrics and getting back to where I used to be. My goal is to be back by the outdoor season.”
He credits the support across the UAA as a major factor in his recovery. “In that meet (when he suffered the injury), the other triple jumpers were really encouraging. Aryan [Shrivastava of the University of Chicago] and Simon [Stumbris of Emory University] were so supportive. Then Aryan held up my jersey on the podium,” stated Dawkins, who received “Get Well” videos from numerous UAA jumpers, led by Carnegie Mellon assistant coach/jumps coach Michele Bradley. “The videos were such positive reminders that the UAA is more than just competitors.”
The conference-wide support did not surprise Davis, who was thankful for the role of the Carnegie Mellon coaches, particularly Gary Aldrich visiting Dawkins in the hospital in Pittsburgh multiple times and Bradley coordinating video encouragement. “People care a lot in the UAA. The goal is to win, to set personal records, and have great success. Sports are measured by wins and losses,” he admitted. “What I loved in the UAA was that every coach saw track & field as a team sport and that they should be a model for Division III in terms of sportsmanship, integrity and respect. Sports is the great unifier in a world that constantly wants us to choose.”
Refining focus for the future
Dawkins is majoring in marketing and organization and strategic marketing (OSM), focusing on product marketing or management. Having spent nearly an entire semester with physical limitations, he believes he has honed in on how to use those skills in the future.
“We take so many things for granted that we do daily. Even opening a door became a challenge for me. If there was no elevator, I had to navigate as many as five flights of stairs with crutches,” he described. “Initially my goal was to go into marketing to use it as a way to encourage inclusion and positive representation, but since my injury, this goal to incorporate diversity into my career has expanded into a career in product management where I can work on making products more inclusive from a wholistic and developmental standpoint rather than just from a marketing one.”
Dawkins continues to move forward athletically and academically with a fresh approach from events no one wants to endure, but from which he has gained a great deal of perspective
