How Charlotte’s Anna Cockrell keeps NC ties strong as she chases gold in Olympic hurdles

Anna Cockrell believed she could compete on any stage because she could hang with her older brother.

That has her competing in her second Olympic games, having advanced to the 400-meter hurdles semifinals in Paris.

Growing up in a family of athletes, including former Duke and NFL cornerback Ross Cockrell, being able to hang with her older siblings was part of her motivation to be great. Anna Cockrell attended Charlotte’s Providence Day School and there, she realized that her abilities on the track could take her much further than high school competition.

In 2015, she was selected to compete on the U.S. team in Cuba at the Caribbean Scholastic Invitational. Later that year, Cockrell went on to win the Pan American U20 Championships in Canada.

In high school, Cockrell formed a close bond with her coach, Carol Lawrence. Even after only a few interactions, Lawrence knew that Cockrell had the ability to be great.

“When I first met her, Anna was very nice and very coachable,” Lawrence said. “She was one of those people that would always be up for an event. When I would tell her what we needed to work on, she studied her film and by the next time we worked on it, she fixed it.”

During her college career at the University of Southern California, Cockrell won the 2019 NCAA title in the 400-meter hurdles and was part of the USC team that won the NCAA team title in 2018.

Despite being a standout athlete at USC, when Cockrell returns to North Carolina she still meets with Lawrence with one goal in mind — the Olympic games.

“She has the same mentality that she had in high school,” said Lawrence, who left Providence Day in June 2022 to become Johnson C. Smith’s head track and field coach. “A lot of times when they have athletes who do great in high school, they go to college and stop working. Anna had a taste of the Olympic trials in high school and she wanted more of that.”

In 2021, at the pandemic-delayed Tokyo games, Cockrell made her Olympic debut in the 400-meter hurdle event where she advanced to the finals and eventually finished fifth.

At the 2024 U.S. Olympic Trials, Cockrell earned silver in the 400-meter hurdles with a personal best of 52.64 seconds. The race was her first sub-53 seconds in the event, only trailing gold medalist Sydney McLaughlin.

In Paris on Sunday, Cockrell clocked a time of 53.91 in the first round of the competition — winning her heat and advancing to Tuesday’s semifinals.

“It’s really hard to make the team,” Cockrell said. “When you go to Olympic trials in the U.S., you know that you’re going to be competitive if you make the team because we have some of the best in the world so it’s exciting to be on a team full of elite athletes.”

Off the track, Cockrell is looking forward to competing in front of her family and friends, a first for her following the COVID restrictions in the 2020 games.

Even though Lawrence will be watching from home, she will still be incredibly nervous for her former athlete but confident in her ability to perform.

“When I watch her now, my heart is gonna be my throat,” Lawrence said. “To just watch her compete on this level is going to be awesome. It’s always a pleasure to watch all the hard work that she put in to get to where it’s paid off. It makes sense for her to be on the podium.”

After her first heat, Cockrell plans to make small adjustments with her coach ahead of Tuesday’s semifinal.

“(Moving forward I will just be) cleaning up a little bit of technical errors,” Cockrell said. “This was really a good first round, get the jitters out, shake the race off and feel good about it. So yeah, now just turning up the intensity.”

Maya Waid is a student with UNC Media Hub, a program with the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, reporting from the Summer Olympics in Paris.