About Olympic silver medalist Anna Cockrell’s triumphant return to Providence Day School
Tuesday was Anna Cockrell Day at Providence Day School in southeast Charlotte, and it was kind of hard to miss the celebration of the Paris Olympics’ silver medalist.
The entire school shut down, shortly after 9 a.m., and the band and cheerleaders were outside the gym, welcoming people inside for a special ceremony. Above the court, a large video screen had a photo of Cockrell, 27, in her Team USA uniform with a message:
“Welcome home, Anna.”
“You can see it’s pandemonium in here, and it’s only going to get louder,” Providence Day girls’ basketball coach Josh Springer literally screamed into a reporter’s microphone as the students filed in.
Why was Springer yelling?
It sounded like a playoff football game in the fourth quarter.
“You have the entire school, 2,000 students, all the faculty and all the staff here,” Springer said. “I mean, it’s not every day you get to have an alum representing your school, your city, your state in the US of A and then bring home a silver medal. (Cockrell is) an unbelievable young lady on the track, but more importantly in the community.”
Many of the students were given small blue flags with “Team Anna” written on them, and they waved them constantly, akin to Pittsburgh Steelers’ fans and their bright yellow Terrible Towels.
Cockrell walked in to wild applause, once everyone was in place, and sat on a podium with longtime Providence Day PA announcer Lee Taylor to talk about her experience in Paris — about winning the silver medal in the 400-meter hurdles — and she took questions from Providence Day students.
Example from a lower-schooler, whose short legs dangled off the end of a chair as he spoke:
When you were in school at Providence Day, what was your favorite thing to do besides running?
Answer, from Cockrell: “I really enjoyed my classes. I realize that’s a terrible answer and it’s kind of boring, but I really did. I enjoyed AP (Government) and AP (U.S. History).”
Cockrell also was roasted, in the nicest way possible, by some of her old teachers, one of whom got her to sing (and, it turns out, Cockrell has a radio-ready voice).
“This was really exciting and really overwhelming,” Cockrell said later. “I think there was a lot more going on than I was aware of. The flags were a lot, but I’m really appreciative of it.”
A stellar prep career and family of athletes
Cockrell, who graduated from Providence Day in 2016, is the school’s most decorated athlete.
She won 16 state championships in high school — the most possible —and was named The Observer’s girls’ track athlete of the year four times.
In college at Southern California, Cockrell became a four-time NCAA champion outdoors and she won an NCAA indoor title as well. Since turning pro, she’s run in two Olympics and in the 2023 World Championships.
And Cockrell comes from a family of athletes.
Her sister, Ciera, now a lawyer, played volleyball at Davidson. Her brother, Ross, played football at Charlotte Latin in high school and at Duke and then for seven years in the NFL (Bills, Steelers, Giants, Panthers, Bucs).
The Cockrell’s father, Kieth, played football at Columbia, where he met his wife, Serena. Kieth Cockrell is now Charlotte market president for Bank of America.
The race that made her famous
Cockrell — who now lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas— wore her silver medal during the ceremony at Providence Day. She said it’s heavy, and she’s been keeping it with her as she’s been traveling a lot since the Olympics ended.
“You get, like, an official box when you get a medal,” she said. “Things you don’t know until you get one. And Nike gave us these little briefcases that double as a display case.”
Everybody who came up to her Tuesday seemed to get a hug, a selfie and they all wanted to touch that medal.
Oh, and everybody wanted to ask about her big race.
Cockrell finished eighth in the 2020 Olympic Games and had been running well heading into Paris.
The 400 hurdle final was billed as a showdown between Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone of the United States and Femke Bol of the Netherlands.
McLaughlin-Levrone ran away form the field, winning in a world record time of 50.37 seconds, but behind her, Cockrell ran past Bol down the stretch, finishing second in a personal best of 51.87.
That was nearly a second faster than Cockrell had run before.
“I really knew I had done everything I had planned to do,” Cockrell said Tuesday, remembering her performance from last summer, “and I was really happy about the execution of the race. Me and my coach had gone over it and we had been working that race strategy all year and tweaking it, and we got to the Games and we tweaked one more time. And we tweaked it one last time for the final.
“I was so happy to reach my potential. I did everything I could’ve done and I did it to the best of my ability, and the medal was a cherry on top.”
This story was originally published October 29, 2024 at 3:34 PM.
