Kendra Chambers looks to gets inducted into El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame in first year of retirement

EL PASO, Texas (KVIA) -- The Hanks Alum, Kendra Chambers-Coleman, gets inducted in the 2025 El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame after hanging up the spikes for good after 2024 Olympic Trials in Paris.

Chambers-Coleman spent one season at UTEP before transferring to the University of Texas at Austin.

“Going to UT in Austin is everyone's a state champion” Chambers-Coleman said.

Chambers-Coleman was an 8x All-American at UT and also qualified for the 2016 and 2021 Olympic Trials in the 800-meter. Despite all the success throughout her track career, the Hanks alum doesn't forger where she came from.

“El Paso has always been such a home, but it's more than a hometown for me," Chambers-Coleman said. I's just a pillar of strength, it raised me to be who I am, I'm half Hispanic and half African American, and I took everything I learned from being in El Paso to every corner of the earth that I visited as a professional athlete. So, to know that I'm being honored right after I retired, one year later, it's crazy. It's such a full circle moment.”

Chambers-Coleman is proud of the immense growth of talented runners coming out of El Paso and says more college coaches are wanting to recruit more athletes from El Paso,

“The feedback that I've heard is that we're hardworking," Chambers-Coleman said. "We don't give up and that's just the true El Paso nature of the athletes that we have.”

Now that Chambers-Coleman is retired she spends her time coaching at the University of Saint Thomas and also works for a non-profit company, Athletes For Hope."

“My goal is to keep track and field at the center of my life, probably forever.”