Amanda Clarke, M.A. '89, Ph.D. '96

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When Amanda Clarke, M.A. '89, Ph.D. '96, was growing up in a rural East Tennessee farming community, she had no idea there were organized sports programs for girls and boys. But then she saw the Junior Olympics on TV and was struck by the sight of girls running.

“It changed my life,” Clarke recalled, “because I thought, oh my gosh, I didn't know girls could do this. I knew boys could, somehow, because I knew there was an NFL and an NBA and the Olympics, but girls? At that moment I thought, ‘I want to do that,’ but I couldn't figure out how to do it because there were no track leagues. My elementary school, middle school didn't have any teams like that.”

She started running long-distance, entering her first marathon at age 15, and taking a Greyhound bus to New York – by herself – to run in the New York City marathon, but it was not until she turned 50 that she actually got to run track competitively – at the U.S. National Masters Championships, where she won a bronze medal in her first competitive race. In August, Clarke represented her country at the World Masters Athletics Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden, where she was a member of the gold-medal-winning 4x400 meter relay team in the women’s 60-year-old category, helping to set an American record with a time only .3 seconds off of the world mark.

While running has always been an important part of Clarke’s life, it is only one thread in a rich tapestry that exposed her to life overseas and ultimately led her to graduate school at UCLA and a gratifying and fulfilling career in education.

Clarke’s family lived in Tennessee because her father, a nuclear physicist specializing in plasma fusion, worked for Oak Ridge National Laboratory there. His job eventually took him to Europe, to work at CERN, and even farther east.
“He used to travel quite a bit to the Soviet Union and bring back toys and books for us,” Clarke said. “So from when I was young, I thought the Russian language seemed really cool and I always had an interest in that from the little trinkets and the books he would bring back for us, like the Russian dolls and Russian fairy tales.

“I thought the Cyrillic script looked kind of magical, so when I started college at the University of Tennessee for my bachelor's, I decided to major in Russian. I think I was the one of two Russian majors in this huge school.”

She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1985 and was able to spend a semester in Leningrad during her undergraduate years. She would return a few years later.

“When I came to UCLA, which has one of the top Slavic departments in the world, I went back to Leningrad as a graduate student. I spent the winter semester there studying. It was very, very hard to get entry into the Soviet Union then, and one of the only ways you could get in was through a student visa. I was really grateful that UCLA had this program set up, so we had access to studying in the Soviet Union.”

As Clarke was finishing up her Ph.D. in Slavic languages and literature, she assumed she would go on to be a college professor. But a chance job opportunity – a week-long substitute teaching job at Harvard-Westlake middle school, near UCLA in Bel Air, which she took to earn some extra money – changed the trajectory of her career.

“When I started teaching there, I realized I loved working with the younger age group, and I thought, ‘Oh, shoot, I thought I was going to be a college professor.’ But my heart told me I would be happier working in a middle school or high school, partly because I realized you can meet the whole child – and not just in the classroom, but go to the music, events and sports at the school and really be a great resource for the kids.

“I got a job at Viewpoint School in Calabasas in 1998, just after my second daughter was born. And I've been here ever since; my daughters went here. I teach AP English and world literature. I was department chair for a long time, and that was really interesting. UCLA prepared me for this by training me to be a curious scholar and to welcome challenges and welcome learning something new all the time.”

All through her student days and continuing into her teaching career, Clarke continued to run long distance but never pursued anything formally, although she ran some marathons and 5k races. She even qualified for the Boston Marathon a few times, but never ran it due to school and, in one case, pregnancy.

“When I started graduate school at UCLA, I didn't know I could do track, even though that was my secret dream, because I was doing these long, long distances. I used to run all over the place into Bel Air and into Santa Monica. My favorite thing to clear my mind was doing the hill on Sunset up to the where the swimming pool is and just kind of running through the campus. And, now we go to the track sometimes and just watch the track team practice and think, gosh, I wish I could have done that, but I just didn't know how.

“Still, I never, ever let go of that private dream which I was embarrassed to tell anybody. Because I had been running long distance for so long, I didn't think I had the speed or aptitude to actually be in an elite program like UCLA. I didn't think I wasn't fast enough to do that.

“I was good at long distance, but I wasn't great,” she said. “And I kept thinking, ‘I think I could be great, but I don't know.’ My real transition was when I was 49 and I thought, ‘I'm almost 50. If I want to follow this dream, I've got to do it now; even if it's a disaster, I have to try and be a track runner.’ I had never dedicated myself to training for track competitions full time just because it just seemed so foreign to me, since I'd been a distance runner for so long.”

Still, it took a personal tragedy – and a promise – to give her the push she needed to make her dream of running track competitively a reality.

“Unfortunately, at the same time, my husband was diagnosed with stage-four cancer and he died, about four months after I started training. The last thing he said before he died was he wanted me to run the national championships that year.

“I still can't believe that was our last conversation. And I didn't want to because I thought, ‘How can I run a track meet after this horribly traumatic thing which has shattered me and my daughters – my younger daughter was only 15 – but he made me promise.

“And so that summer, about six weeks after he died, I went to North Carolina and I ran the national championships for Masters, because I had just turned 50, and I got the bronze medal. I realize, looking back, my story is that I am not a long-distance runner; I should have been a short sprinter or a middle-distance runner the whole time because I had the ability. I just didn't know it because I was doing long distance.”

She has no regrets that she did not find her competitive footing earlier in her life.

“There's zero disappointment because I think if I had done track when I was younger, maybe I wouldn't be doing it now. I still have this unmet desire to do well, and so for the past ten years, I've been figuring out the track world and doing competitions, and I finally made it to the World Championships this summer.

“USA Track and Field gives us Olympic uniforms that were left over. So we were all wearing the uniforms from the Rio Olympics. Thinking back to seeing the Junior Olympics when I was nine, when I was standing on the podium with my teammates with the gold medal and seeing the American flag and hearing the national anthem, it just felt like it was full circle. It took me 51 years to get there, but I got there.”

The day after Clarke returned from Sweden, the school year started.

“I teach 12th grade. I was so jetlagged and so excited; I told my students, ‘Please forgive if I make no sense. But this is what just happened.’ And they stood up and they gave me a standing ovation. They were so excited. And I was able to tell them that if it doesn't happen when you're nine, 19, 29, 39 or even 59, it can happen in 60. You just can't ever let go of that dream.”

Clarke has promoted the idea of lifelong growth and achievement within the UCLA community as well, serving as president of the San Fernando Valley Alumni network, and wholeheartedly endorsing the concept of the Bruin Promise, an affirmation that UCLA will provide alumni an accessible, campus-driven gateway to lifelong learning in an ever-changing and evolving world.

“I’m so fond of my experience and grateful for just having been able to get a Ph.D. at UCLA, which I love more than anything. I think it’s so great that they are promoting this idea that we never stop learning and growing.”

There are more opportunities for growth and achievement on the horizon for Clarke, although she has to be selective about the ones she takes advantage of.

“The indoor national championships are in Florida in February of 2025, so I'm already training for that. The world indoor championships are in March, but I can't afford to do both, since I've already taken up too much time from work to go to Sweden.”

The world championships are every two years, and Clarke hopes to be there to defend her relay title as well as to participate in individual events, most likely in the 400 meters or 800 meters.

“I have to start saving my money because I'm doing this on a teacher’s salary. You have to pay your own way to go there; there's not as much money in track as opposed to other professional leagues for the elite people, and there's certainly no money in it for a 60-year-old. But I would love to go back when I'm 62.”