Pacific University Athletics

Budweiser Hawkins Makes A Name For Himself In Track

5/15/2015 2:09:00 PM

By Blake Timm '98, Sports Information Director

FOREST GROVE - When it came to his final attempt in the long jump at April's Northwest Conference Track and Field Championships, Budweiser Hawkins could not help but think of his "so close" moments from the previous two years.
 
In the 2013 and 2014 meets, Hawkins held the lead right up until the end.  In 2013, Whitworth's Tyler Guinn passed Hawkins up on the final jump of the competition.  In 2014, Hawkins' best jump was his first, which held until another Whitworth athlete, Jonathan Hoff, went a half-inch better on the final jump.
 
Now, with the conference title in the balance for the final time, those two years flashed through Hawkins mind again.  "It's rare that the same thing happens to you two years straight.  I have never forgotten about it because it was devastating," Hawkins said.  "This year I had a different mindset."
 
That mindset was to put winning aside and to simply focus on the moment, to have fun in competition.  It worked.  On his final jump, Hawkins flew to a lifetime best of 23 feet, 3.25 inches.  He won the conference title by just over a foot.
 
The rest of the meet was a snowball of success for the Las Vegas native.  Hawkins won the triple jump by five inches and survived a jump off with Whitworth's Lucas McGill to become the first athlete to win all three jumps in the same conference meet.  Add to that a fifth place finish in the 100 meters and a fast anchor leg on the Boxers' second place 400-meter relay team and you have one of the best individual conference meet performances in school history.
 
For his efforts, Hawkins was not only named the NWC Championships Men's Field Athlete of the Meet, but was also selected by Pacific's coaches and athletic staff as the university's 2015 Male Outstanding Senior Athlete.
 
 It is an impressive finish for a man who saw track and field simply as a way to keep busy after his true love, basketball, was over.
 
SETTING PRIORITIES
From early on, basketball was the sport of choice for Hawkins.  His father, Budweiser Hawkins II, had played Division I basketball at Pepperdine in the mid 1970s.  So, like his unusual name, hoops ran in the family.
 
"I was really head over heels with basketball and wanted to play, no matter if I was a superstar or not," Hawkins said.  "I just wanted to play the game."
 
In high school, Hawkins certainly played basketball at a superstar level.  A two-time first team all-conference selection at Las Vegas' Trinity Christian High School, Hawkins averaged 26 points per game as a senior.  During his junior campaign, Hawkins led the state of Nevada with an average of 27 points per game.
 
With as talented as he was on the basketball court, Hawkins was arguably more talented on the track.  A three-time state champion in the both the high jump and long jump at the Nevada Class IV level, Hawkins' Class IV record of 6 feet 7, inches still stands.
 
But Hawkins is quick to discount how seriously he took track and field in high school, calling himself raw at best.  "I didn't take a lot of coaching advice when I was in high school, so I was just going out there and winging it," he said.  "I was just out there to have fun.  I was more in love with basketball, so that's where my head was at."
 
Basketball took Hawkins for his first two years of college to Quincy, Calif., where connections landed him at Feather River Junior College.  He earned First Team All-Golden Valley Conference honors in his sophomore year, averaging 9.8 points per game in 24 games. 
 
Those kind of numbers, however, don't bring a lot of offers to take your game to the next level.  Hawkins had plans to move back home and get a job before he caught the eye of Pacific head men's basketball coach Tim Cleary at a sophomore showcase.  Cleary brought Hawkins to Forest Grove for a visit and was hooked on the Pacific community.  He wasn't sure, though, if Pacific was hooked on him.
 
"I didn't play well on my visit.  I thought, 'These guys are going to hate me.  They don't want me here,'" Hawkins said.  "But they showed love to me.  There's not a lot of places where you come into the recruiting visit and it feels genuine.  I wanted to go somewhere where it was and as soon as I got here I felt that."
 
When he arrived at Pacific for the Fall 2012 semester, Hawkins made quick friends with two other California junior college transfers.  Daniel Zitani came to Pacific from Diablo Valley College in the Bay Area suburb of Pleasant Hill and Eric Moore, a Salem native, arrived from College of the Siskiyous in Weed, Calif.
 
The three became friends and roommates and would eventually push Hawkins back to the sport that he will forever be known at Pacific for.
 
THE KING OF JUMPS

Hawkins was a key role player for the Boxers in his two seasons, but never reached that superstar status.  Hawkins averaged 3.6 points per game in 21 games as a junior, making 10 starts.  His scoring output increased as a senior, averaging 6.7 points per game while starting in half of the 21 games he appeared in.
 
Once basketball season was over, however, there was a competitive void.  Track would soon be there to fill it.
 
Zitani and Moore convinced Hawkins to come out for track, thinking that his presence could help the team.  Moore talked to Pacific's then-track coach, Tim Boyce, about having Hawkins come out.
 
"People have always told me that I should do track, but I was hard headed and didn't really listen," Hawkins said.  "I was a basketball player.  All of the track stuff, it was just something that I did.  I did it to have fun and compete."
 
While still raw in terms of technique, Hawkins had an immediate impact on conference meet scoring.  Hawkins tied for second in the NWC high jump with teammate Kelson Kawai with a clearance of 6 feet, 6.25 inches, and had the first of his second heartbreaking second place finishes in the long jump with a mark of 22 feet, 11.25 inches.
 
The 2014 season was not as successful in terms of personal best marks, but Hawkins was still an impact performer.  He again finished second at the NWC Championships in the long jump and placed fourth in the high jump.
 
The 2015 season brought a lot of change.  Having exhausted his basketball eligibility, Hawkins concentrated exclusively on track and field.  Competing in his first indoor season, Hawkins finished with a mark of 6 feet, 6.75 inches in the high jump and 22 feet, 4.5 inches in the long jump.  Both were comparable to the marks that Hawkins finished with at the end of the 2014 outdoor season.
 
The other change came in coaching, with Boyce replaced by Brent Ericksen.  The new coach placed Hawkins in the sprints, giving him a chance to show off his speed.  By season's end, Hawkins finished with a best of 11.07 seconds in the 100 meters and ran the anchor leg on the Boxers' second place 400-meter relay at the NWC Championships that had the fastest time by a Pacific squad since 1976.
 
But the biggest change? Ericksen succeeded in convincing Hawkins to try the triple jump, an event that he had been hesitant to try because of how technical it can be.  "It didn't look like my thing, so I brushed it off," Hawkins said.  "I didn't know how it was going to go.  The hardest part was getting my mind around the 'right, right, left' motion."
 
In his first ever triple jump competition, Apr. 18 at the Lewis & Clark Invitational, Hawkins won with a mark of 44 feet, 11.5 inches.  That was not only the second best performance in the conference, but the ninth best in school history.
 
Then came the conference meet.  After Friday's long jump championship, it was on to the high jump.  That event provided what Hawkins describes as one of the best sports memories he will ever have: his first ever jump-off.
 
"I didn't get to jump off with the guys from Whitworth that beat me in the long jump.  Now it came down to getting to jump off with someone from Whitworth in the high jump," Hawkins said.  "Going head-to-head in that environment is the moment we live for as athletes, to be on that stage with everyone watching.  And to be a champion out of it too, you can't ask for anything more."
 
By the time Hawkins reached the triple jump, he wasn't going to be stopped.  Leading from start to finish, Hawkins walked away with the title and the second best mark in school history at 47 feet, 3.75 inches.  The historic triple title was complete.
 
After his win in the long jump, Hawkins called his dad, giving him the play-by-play of the entire day.  The more aged Budweiser, a wellness counselor in Las Vegas, had sage advice for his son.  "He told me to think of it as a movie," Hawkins said.  "Most movies have good endings.  So my whole theme was to let it be movie-like.  I just took one jump at a time."
 
THE NEXT PHASE
Budweiser Hawkins admits that he likes to take life one day at a time, one jump at a time.  So when it comes to his future after graduation, he says the script for that movie has yet to be written.
 
A psychology major, Hawkins had the chance to try coaching during the winter, working with Pacific's junior varsity men's basketball staff.  He enjoyed the experience and has been told that he has a gift of working with players.  He also hasn't ruled out the idea of returning to school, perhaps earning a doctorate like his father.
 
But for now, it's all about today.  "I have a long life to live, God willing," Hawkins said.  "It's going to end up successful one way or another.  It's not something I am stressing over right now."
 
And while Hawkins didn't become a big name in basketball, he made certain that no one at Pacific will forget the name Budweiser Hawkins for a long time.