HAZEL CLARK COMES HOME
- Amy Lynn-Cramer
- Mar 11
- 6 min read
Updated: Mar 11
An Olympian returns to South Orange to raise her daughter
By Amy Lynn-Cramer
When three-time Olympian and South Orange native Hazel Clark walks through the front door of her childhood home, she’s returning to her and service once filled the air. Everything I learned about hard work started right here.
The lawn that once drew national news cameras tells only part of Hazel Clark’s story. Clark was raised by a mother and father who balanced one another. Her father was Joe Clark, the legendary Eastside High School principal portrayed by Morgan Freeman in Lean on Me. With her mother’s quiet strength, they created a household grounded in integrity, encouragement and unwavering expectations.
At the highest levels of international competition, where athletic careers are defined in fractions of a second, Clark built a résumé that includes Olympic appearances, multiple national titles and leadership roles in the global business arena. And now she is raising her own daughter here.
“I didn’t realize how much this community formed me until I left it,” Clark says.
Long before the Olympic lanes and national rankings, Clark was growing up in a family of elite runners – with an accomplished older sister, four-time Olympian Joetta Clark Diggs, and a brother already dominating the track.
“I ice skated, danced and played basketball,” Clark says. “I did everything to avoid track and field. I didn’t want to be compared to my brother and sister. I wanted to find myself.”
Clark didn’t step fully into the sport until she was 16, when she finally joined the track team at Columbia High School, a decision that felt deeply intentional. Within a year, she was ranked No. 1 in the nation. “It became mine,” she says. “That made all the difference.”
She retained the lessons instilled at home. “My father pushed excellence,” Clark says. “But he also believed deeply in preparation. His message was always, ‘Do the work, and you’ll be ready.’”
That mindset carried her to the University of Florida, where she was coached by her brother, J.J., now head coach and director of track and field at Stanford University, and on to three Summer Olympics. At the 2000 Sydney games, Clark stood on the world’s biggest stage representing Team USA in the 800 meters. But what the world saw – the spectacle, the spotlight, the expectations – didn’t reflect the anxiety and self-doubt she was battling behind the scenes.
The medals and milestones told one story. Her inner world told another – one shaped by crippling performance anxiety. “I thought champions weren’t supposed to be scared,” she says. “I didn’t know how to articulate what I was feeling.”
That realization would stay with her long after the race. It later inspired her new children’s book, Hazel Takes the First Step, released March 12. “It’s the story I wish someone had told me,” she says. “You can be scared and still start. Those things can exist together.” The book reframes success, teaching children to see courage not as the absence of fear but as forward motion. “Sometimes you just have to take the first step,” she says. “You don’t need the whole path.”
The days leading up to races were the hardest. “I couldn’t eat. My hands would shake. I questioned everything,” Clark says.
At her second Olympic appearance in Athens, Clark competed after suffering severe burns in the Olympic Village, when scalding hot water accidentally spilled down her back while she was getting her hair braided. “It was painful,” she says. “But I wasn’t going to quit.”
By her third Olympic appearance in Beijing, years of elite training had taken a toll. Injury struck in a way that forced her to confront a reality she had long outrun. “When your body says stop, you have to listen,” she says. “That was one of the hardest lessons of my life.”
The injury marked the end of her professional running career but not the end of her drive. That internal pressure to measure up, to represent the family legacy and to never falter shaped her in ways that extended far beyond the track.
She took a role in sports marketing at The Coca-Cola Co. in Atlanta, stepping into a global corporate position that demanded the same discipline and long-term vision she had honed on the track. “Sport teaches you how to perform under pressure,” she says. “Business isn’t that different. You prepare. You execute. You adapt.”
Her career expanded internationally, including a senior leadership role with the Bermuda Tourism Authority, where she helped shape strategy and partnerships globally. There, she married her husband Shane Mcilwain, and gave birth to their daughter, also named Hazel.
“I’ve always thought big,” Clark says. “But thinking big also means knowing when to pivot.”
After years abroad, she began to feel the pull of something quieter. “I worked incredibly hard in Bermuda,” she says. “But I realized I had missed moments with my daughter that I couldn’t get back. That shifted everything.”
Her father’s lessons about service over status echoed louder than ever after he died in 2021. “He always said none of it matters if you’re not serving others,” Clark says. “Not the medals. Not the fame. What matters is who you helped.”
The family continues to carry that legacy forward, with Clark and her siblings in early discussions to reimagine Lean on Me and develop a documentary exploring their father’s life and enduring impact on education and community leadership.
At the same time, her mother, who was living with them in Bermuda, was longing to come back to New Jersey. The gravitational pull of home grew stronger.
And so, Clark moved back into her childhood home and enrolled her daughter at South Mountain Elementary School. “There’s nothing like this community,” she says. “The same village that raised me is now surrounding our daughter.”
Today, Clark works for the YMCA in a development role overseeing strategic partnerships across several branches, helping secure funding and corporate support to serve families in need.
Her role doesn’t come with superyachts or international headlines, but it comes with impact. “The Y gave half a million dollars in assistance to families in this community,” she says. “That matters.”
For much of her life, Clark pushed through anxiety by outperforming it. Now, she’s learning a different skill: balance.
She also continues to run camps and clinics focused on athletic performance and emotional resilience. “At my camps, we talk about anxiety,” she says. “We normalize it. I tell them, ‘You are not your time. You are not your medal.’”
Clark knows that pressure intimately. In her 2024 TED Talk on performance anxiety, she speaks openly about standing on Olympic starting lines feeling physically ill, terrified she wouldn’t finish. “I thought anxiety meant I wasn’t ready,” she says. “Now I know it means something matters.”
And in South Orange, she’s doing exactly that.
When you ask her what she’s most proud of, the answer isn’t that she’s an Olympian or one of the most decorated and notable collegiate track and field athletes in history. “It’s alignment,” she says.
“When your work, your family and your values are all moving in the same direction.”
Back in the town that built her, Hazel Clark is still running. Only now, the finish line looks different. “Winning isn’t always a podium,” she says. “Sometimes it’s being present. Sometimes it’s helping someone else take their first step.”
Amy Lynn-Cramer is a health and life coach who helps people navigate career transitions, leadership growth and workplace culture with clarity and confidence.
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