Hall of Fame
Dawn Roberts Hudgins graduated from Oglethorpe with a B.S. in biology in 1993. She joined the cross country team in Coach Bob Unger’s inaugural season, and followed that in the spring by joining a restart of the track team, which had been inactive for about a decade prior to her coach’s arrival on campus. She had not participated in either sport before college, as was the case with many of her teammates at the time.
Dawn started out in cross country, but quickly came to realize that her muscles were more fast twitch than built for distance. After her first track season of longer distance events, and to the shock of her coach, she found her stride in the jumping and sprinting events. Dawn was especially passionate about the triple jump, and, in those days previous to internet, she educated herself about the technical aspects of the event by reading books and watching television. Coach Unger’s first specialty was cross country, so both the coach and team together faced a learning curve when it came to the sprinting and field events. Dawn especially enjoyed the bigger track events in Atlanta, where she competed in about 8-10 events per meet.
Dawn was a member of both teams for all four years of her college career, and she also played center forward on the soccer team during her senior year. After graduation, she spent several years studying shark behavior in the Bahamas and south Florida, eventually returning to Georgia because she missed the trees and the country life. She has worked in the QA lab at Anheuser-Busch in Cartersville, GA for over 20 years, and she has lived in Menlo, a small town in Northwest Georgia, since marrying her husband, Anthony, 19 years ago. Dawn and Anthony have three children – Andrew, Elijah, and Allie. Today, Dawn enjoys spending time with her family and watching all three of her children play sports, including soccer, basketball, and cross country
