Girls coach of the year: Providence Day’s Carol Lawrence traded in ‘a rat race’

Carol Lawrence was doing well in the rat race.

But there were other races she was interested in.

Sixteen years ago, she left her life on Wall Street and picked Charlotte as the spot for a quieter place to raise her daughter Arielle.

“These were the days after 9-11,” Lawrence recalled. “I was looking for a change, for something other than New York. The money was nice, but there’s more to life than the rat race.”

Lawrence took a job as technology teacher at Providence Day School and rediscovered her love of track and field.

After 15 years at the school — the last 12 as head coach — Lawrence has a legacy of nearly 20 state championships for her boys’ and girls’ track and field teams at Providence Day.

With another sweep of the boys’ and girls’ N.C. Independent Schools Athletic Association state championships this season, Lawrence is The Observer’s Girls’ Coach of the Year.

The honor comes as Lawrence concludes her time at Providence Day and moves on to Johnson C. Smith University, where she will direct the men’s and women’s track and field programs.

“I’m an analyst, by nature,” said Lawrence, 52, who earned her degree at New York Institute of Technology and was a financial analyst in New York City. “I applied that approach to the track and field program.”

She wasn’t a stranger to the sport.

Lawrence grew up in Jamaica and was an outstanding sprinter and hurdler, but she put all that on the back burner when he landed her analyst job. In the back of her mind, still, there was an urge to return to the sport.

Once she made the decision to move South, Lawrence said she spent a year trying to decide where to move.

“My daughter was a standout swimmer, and I liked the MAC (Mecklenburg Aquatic Club) program,” she said. “And that’s how we came to Charlotte.”

“We knew nobody here,” Lawrence added. “We were starting from scratch.”

She used her approach as an analyst with the Providence Day track and field program.

“For every kid who came through the program, I made a list — of things that kid did well, and things he or she needed to work on,” Lawrence said.

“... We didn’t use the cookie-cutter approach. Each person is an individual.”

She became head coach in 2012, and it didn’t take long for the championships to start piling up.

The Chargers won their first girls’ state crown in 2013. “That might have been my favorite year,” Lawrence recalled. “It was a lot of fun.”

Since then, Providence Day has won every girls’ state championship in the NCISAA’s big-school category — nine in a row.

The boys’ team wasn’t far behind, winning eight of the last nine years, including the last three.

Among the products of Lawrence’s program was Anna Cockrell, a 2016 Providence Day graduate who ran at Southern California, won the NCAA championship in the 400-meter hurdles, and competed for the United States in the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

Other standouts included 400-meter specialist Gracie Whelan, now running in the Ivy League at Brown; Jason Krell, now at Louisville; Camryn Taylor, running at Williams College in New England; and this year’s standout, Falon Spearman, a Duke commit.

Lawrence said she will miss the collegial nature of the Providence Day track and field program.

“After practice each day, the kids would sit in a circle and talk about school, the team, and their lives,” she said.

When COVID-19 shut down the program in 2020, Lawrence conducted daily practices via the Google-Meet app.

“I even included some cooking classic — some great Jamaican meals,” she said. “The boys got into it too.”

She’ll miss working with the Chargers.

“It’s hard to leave,” she said. “I’ve really loved my time at Providence Day. The kids made life enjoyable.”