.png&width=32&height=32&type=webp)
The University of Mississippi Athletics
FEATURE: A Journey Through Connie Price-Smith’s Hall of Fame Career
12/17/2024 | Cross Country, Track and Field
Quotes and background info courtesy of: St. Louis Post-Dispatch; Sports Illustrated; USA Today; Indianapolis Star; Saluki Athletics; Ole Miss Athletics
Photos courtesy of: John Smith; The Southern Illinoisan; Saluki Athletics; Ole Miss Athletics
OXFORD, Miss. – When Ole Miss track & field head coach Connie Price-Smith is inducted into the USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame tonight, it will be the sixth such honor of her career.
She is a member of the Saluki Hall of Fame (1990), the Drake Relays Hall of Fame (2003), the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame (2012), the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame (2014) and the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame (2016), but this will be the first such honor for Price-Smith solely as a coach. She is one of just 10 total inductees and one of two women alongside Nell Jackson to ever earn a spot in both the USATF Hall of Fame as an athlete and the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame as a coach.
Follow along as we take a trip through Price-Smith's spectacular career, from her humble beginnings in the St. Louis area, to her time as a basketball star at Southern Illinois, to her evolution into one of the best throwers in American history, and finally into one of the most respected and successful track coaches in the United States.
-----
EARLY YEARS (1962-80) – St. Charles, Missouri
Connie Price was born in 1962 to Ella and James Price in St. Charles, Missouri – a St. Louis suburb on the banks of the Missouri River – where James worked in a brick factory and as a mechanic for Ford.
Price was a gifted athlete, sprouting up to 6-foot-1 as a ninth grader and 6-foot-3 by her senior year at St. Charles High. Coach Judy Lowery described her first sight of Price to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Dave Dorr as a "jaw-dropper."
Price successfully petitioned the school board to let her compete in four sports. And she was superb in all of them.
She starred on the basketball, softball and volleyball teams, and Price was an all-around talent on the track, winning two state titles in the shot put, posting a high jump PR of 5-foot-11 and a 100-yard dash best of 11.2. Price also anchored the 4x100-meter relay and triple jumped, while Lowery recalled her as the fastest on the team. "Every kid on the team would stop what they were doing to watch her run," Lowery told Dorr in 1987.
But basketball is where her talent shined the brightest. At St. Charles High, Price led the Pirates to a 64-12 record in three seasons as a starter, earning two All-Gateway honors. As a senior, she averaged 15.3 points and 11.3 rebounds, pushing St. Charles to the Class 4A regional final and a 25-3 record.
Her athletic gifts were creating once unthinkable opportunities, and with them she promised her mother she was going to college. But her gentle spirit masked how incredible an athlete she was.
"We never heard her brag," James Price told the Post-Dispatch in 1987. "They say the one who brags on himself is half scandal."
Dorr's 1987 feature supplied this anecdote about her humble nature: "[Price] goes about pursuing her goals without a word, almost as one who prefers to remain in the shadows. Trumpet blasts are not her style. But rarely does she fail. And rarely is she not true to her word."
BASKETBALL STAR (1980-84) – Carbondale, Illinois
Price enrolled at Southern Illinois in the fall of 1980 on a basketball scholarship but had hoped to also fit in track – giving her an agonizing choice in her first days in Carbondale.
After seeking guidance from Lowery, she decided to hold off on track to focus on basketball. Cindy Scott – SIU's women's basketball coach from 1978-98, the winningest coach in program history – recalled to the Post-Dispatch in 1987 that she wasn't sure Price would survive her first year in college.
"She was extremely shy," Scott said. "Of all the players I've coached, she is the one who really blossomed as a person. She learned to trust people and, as she did, she began to like herself. She learned to appreciate her size as a gift from God. She's not shy now. She's a confident young lady."
"She was so much bigger and stronger than anyone we played, so she held back," Scott told Sports Illustrated's Merrell Noden in a 1999 feature. "She didn't want to hurt anybody."
Price learning to embrace her size took her skills on the basketball court to new levels, and with her came the Salukis.
Price helped lead Southern to a 75-47 record, including a 22-11 campaign her junior season in 1982-83. That year, Price was leading the nation in field goal percentage before a fractured finger sidelined her – finishing the season third at a .650 clip from the field. All told, Price scored 1,271 points as a Saluki and still ranks fifth all-time in field goal percentage (.571) and 10th in rebounding (744).
Price considered a professional career in Italy, but track & field called back to her through the urging of two key figures: SIU women's track coach Don DeNoon, and her future husband and professional coach, John Smith.
DeNoon had never given up the dream of Price on his team. With basketball in the rearview and an extra season of eligibility available, DeNoon would have his chance in 1985.
ENTER JOHN SMITH (1985) – Carbondale, Illinois
John Smith has carved a legacy as one of the premier throws coaches in the United States, with protegees at dozens of Division I schools and scores of national titles to his credit. But for Smith, it starts and ends with the day Connie Price walked into his life.
While Price was dominating on the hardwood, Smith was an All-American shot putter at Southern Illinois from 1980-84. Smith won eight MVC titles across the shot put, discus and hammer and was part of a legendary 1984 squad that posted two top-10 national finishes.
Smith's recollection of his first time seeing Price would become the nexus of nearly every feature story written on the pair in the decades to come.
"I kind of looked at her," Smith told Dorr in a 1987 interview of his first sight of her years earlier. "I looked again. I said to myself 'If God ever made a discus thrower, she was it.'"
Smith would have his chance to prove himself right as a graduate assistant coach in 1985. DeNoon handed the reins of Price's training to Smith, and Price took to the shot put immediately, winning conference titles both indoor and outdoor in 1985.
The discus took more time. After learning the techniques over spring break, progress was slow. She fouled the first two attempts of her first meet before sending her third out only 98 feet. Price is said to have slammed her discus and vowed to never throw it again. "Oh, yes you will," Smith shot back.
Whether she knew it or not, that extra season in Carbondale was the beginning of a 15-year professional career as a thrower and the start of a lifelong association with the sport she agonized putting on hold just a few years earlier.
Smith? He knew immediately.
"After watching her throw for three days, I went and got her a passport," Smith recalled to Sports Illustrated in 1999. "I told myself 'If she's not national champion in two years, I quit.'"
CALLING, FOUND (June 27, 1987) – San Jose, California
A little over two years later, Connie Price was in the ring at San Jose City College's Jaguar Stadium for the U.S. discus final. When she let her best throw of the day fly, the distance read 212 feet, five inches – a far cry from that disappointing 98-foot open in 1985.
She not only fulfilled Smith's prophecy of winning a national title in two years, but she did so by nearly six feet and with what was then the fourth-best throw ever by an American woman.
Price became an overnight sensation in the track world, the future of the sport in the United States and perhaps the best throwing prospect the Americans had against the otherworldly numbers coming from the other side of the Iron Curtain.
The next morning in St. Charles, her father James did his own version of trumpet blasting: unfurling and hanging an American flag outside the family home. Dave Dorr described it as such:
"A wiry man of 83, Price was making a statement of pride. He couldn't shout from the rooftops, so the flag said what he wanted to say."
IN THE SPOTLIGHT (1987-2001)
What followed was an unprecedented string of success for an American women's thrower. Four Olympic Games appearances. A spot on every U.S. team beginning from that day in San Jose in 1987 until the end of her career nearly 15 years later. A whopping 25 national titles, the most by any American women's thrower. Seven international medals, including the best ever at the time by an American woman in the shot put with a World Championship silver in 1995.
And by her side was John Smith, whom Price married in 1990 amid their globe-trotting adventures on the professional throwing circuits.
The duo called a lot of different places home during Price-Smith's pro career. But none could replicate the Smith family farm in Portage, Indiana. A 16-acre mowed swath of land hand-crafted by the Smiths themselves and cited by USA Today in 1993 as one of America's "fields of dreams," it featured several throwing rings and a weightlifting gym in the garage for both Price-Smith and the throng of local throwers trained by Smith.
"I'd come home and there'd be like 25 high school kids waiting for John in the backyard," Price-Smith told Sports Illustrated in 1999.
However, Price-Smith's early career coincided with rampant use of performance enhancing drugs across the sport, something that became obvious upon arriving in Seoul for the 1988 Summer Olympics. The frustration of competing against widespread cheating and the increasing drumbeat of outside voices attempting to separate Connie from John nearly drove her from the sport.
In the end, though, they were unsuccessful.
"[My career] is what I want to do and I want to do it for me and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or says," Price-Smith told the Post-Dispatch ahead of the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials. "As long as John and I and my family accept what I'm doing, then there's no problem."
The quest to give Price-Smith the credit she deserves drives John Smith, who has attempted to discern what the "clean" world record is – a title that Connie had a very good likelihood of owning at one point or another with her career-bests in the discus and shot put.
But by 1999 in the twilight of her career, Connie had moved on.
"I don't read that stuff," she told Sports Illustrated that year. "I'd like to think that the world's not like that. I live in a Norman Rockwell world."
"[Connie] is raw talent," Don DeNoon told the Post-Dispatch back in 1987. "The kid's on candy bars. Connie Price loves candy."
Connie Price-Smith had given American track & field something it had never seen out of a woman thrower. And in 1996, the sport was giving something back to her: the chance to compete for the United States on her own soil, and in the prime of her career.
A TWIST OF FATE (August 2, 1996) – Atlanta, Georgia
Price-Smith was ready for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
She was no novice. This was her third Olympics, with her first coming in Seoul in 1988 and her second in Barcelona in 1992 – the latter of which she lost 12 pounds during while staying in an Olympic Village with no air-conditioning.
Both her and John had learned from their previous two trips. They splurged for a hotel outside of the Olympic Village, yet close to the practice track. But Price-Smith – ever the rule-follower – returned to the Village prior to the final in observance of an IOC rule stating competing athletes had to depart from Olympic Village.
"She never did and still doesn't consider herself better than anyone else," said her old high school coach Judy Lowery to the Post-Dispatch back in 1988.
As fate would have it, an ill-timed fire alarm while she was in the shower sent her up and down the stairs 90 minutes before the final – aggravating a knee she had injured the year prior.
Despite all that, Price-Smith finished fifth at 63 feet and a half-inch – at the time the best throw ever by an American woman in the Olympics and the highest finish by an American in the shot put since Earlene Brown's bronze in Rome in 1960. That throw left her five inches off the podium – five inches Price-Smith could easily attribute to the unfortunate fire alarm, but chose not to.
Price-Smith's response to that question from the Indianapolis Star's David Woods in 1997 was in reference to her father, James, who had died in 1993: "He was very mellow, the kind of guy who liked to lay out under a tree in a hammock," Price-Smith said. "He said things happen for a reason."
TWILIGHT (1997-2001)
After Atlanta, Price-Smith knew the 2000 Olympic cycle would be her last. She made five more World finals the remainder of her career until 2001, and she did indeed make Team USA for a fourth Olympics in Sydney – becoming one of just 14 American women at the time to ever compete in four Olympiads.
The increase of drug testing around the world after the late '80s surge and the fall of the Iron Curtain helped even the playing field, giving Price-Smith a late-stage career resurgence that kept her interest in the sport.
"We used to struggle to make a final," John Smith told Sports Illustrated in 1999. "Now, if Connie throws well, she gets a medal. That's kept her in the sport. If [the level of drug use] had stayed where it was in 1988, she would have gotten out."
The Smiths had moved their operations to Bloomington back in 1993, where Price-Smith studied massage therapy and began working around her throwing schedule at the Iron Pit gym. The money in track & field has never been lucrative in the throws, but for Price-Smith it all came down to her love of the sport – including fun outside competitions like setting the U.S. deadlifting record at 501 pounds and two still-standing Highlands Games records in Scotland in the open stone and standing stone.
"I [compete] because I love doing it," Price-Smith told the Indianapolis Star in 1997. "And I would do it regardless if there were no publicity, if there were no money, if there were no anything. I would still do it."
But the biggest role Price-Smith took on in these latter years is one that would serve her well in years to come as one of the nation's top college track coaches: mentor.
"It's hard to imagine track and field without Connie around," said American hammer great and cage designer Lance Deal to Sports Illustrated in 1999. "She's the peacemaker. She has nothing bad to say about anybody."
HAIL, ALMA MATER (2001-15) – Carbondale, Illinois
Price-Smith didn't have to wait long for the phone to ring at the end of her professional career. In the fall of 2001 after her retirement, Southern Illinois asked if she was interested in running the Saluki women's program.
John Smith had been coaching at Ohio State since 1999, where he turned the Buckeyes into a national force in the throws. But by 2004, SIU had given Connie the reins to the combined track & field and cross country programs, which enticed Smith to return to his roots in Carbondale.
From there, the duo helped further Southern's reputation as a mid-major track powerhouse. Under Price-Smith's leadership, the Salukis won 12 conference team titles across track & field and cross country. On the track alone, SIU under Price-Smith won six MVC team trophies, scored 229 NCAA points, coached 72 All-Americans, eight NCAA champions and seven NCAA runners-up while earning 11 NCAA top-25 team finishes.
Hidden in those numbers are scores of spectacular athletes, from world record holders to freshman phenoms to all-around great teams that scored in bunches to bring home conference team titles.
Price-Smith's talents as a head coach mirror those she had as an athlete. Incredible work ethic. Gentle spirit. Easy listening ear. Tenacity, but in a different way than when she was in the ring.
"I just love being around the kids and teaching and the paperwork," Price-Smith told the Post-Dispatch's Kathleen Nelson in 2008.
Yes, the paperwork. And anyone who has ever worked with her can attest. Meticulously laid out binders of papers and never-ending checklists dot her desk, despite all her coaching duties and outside committee work as one of the most respected coaches in the industry.
All these years later, it's still the details that help Price-Smith excel.
"The paperwork: the scheduling, the lists to check off, the day-to-day stuff that makes it all work together," she continued in 2008. "When you put the details together right, you see the big picture clearly."
TRACK ROYALTY (2016) – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Walk around any track meet with Connie Price-Smith and take note of how many people stop her to say hello, to talk shop, to ask for advice. Her status as "track royalty" – as John Smith dubs it – is evident at any event from the smallest of regular season meets to national championships to the biggest stage of all: the Olympic Games.
Price-Smith's respect in the track world garnered her numerous prior appointments on national coaching staffs for Team USA – including prior Olympic stints as an assistant in Beijing (2008) and London (2012) – but just days before taking the job at Ole Miss in 2015 she was awarded the highest coaching title of her career: head women's coach for the United States track & field team at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
"I think we have a good team going down there to Rio," Price-Smith said at an Ole Miss press conference. "We go from men and women from 16- to 41-year-olds. I think everyone that competed in trials competed well and we will go down to Rio and do the same."
Price-Smith's Team USA did just that, winning six gold medals – several coming in historic fashion. The U.S. swept the top three spots in the women's 100-meter hurdles, the first such sweep of the event in Olympic history, and had additional gold medal wins in the 400-meter hurdles, 4x100 and 4x400-meter relays and the women's long jump.
But it was in the shot put where destiny came calling for Price-Smith as Team USA's head coach. In Atlanta 20 years earlier, Price-Smith finished fifth and was five inches shy of becoming the first American woman to medal in the event since 1960. Michelle Carter did so in stunning fashion, winning the first gold medal for the United States at a new American record 67 feet, 8.25 inches.
And not far behind her? Then Ole Miss sophomore Raven Saunders in fifth place, the youngest American to ever make the final.
HOTTY TODDY (2015-Present) – Oxford, Mississippi
Price-Smith's name always seemed to pop up for power conference track jobs, but it was when Ole Miss came calling in 2015 – just weeks after pulling off one of the best days in SIU track history – that she and John agreed to take the leap.
Price-Smith had just led Southern to two NCAA top-12 finishes on the women's side in 2015, powered by three NCAA titles. But the SEC is a juggernaut in track & field, where it's arguably easier to place higher at NCAAs than its buzzsaw conference championship meets.
But Ole Miss under Price-Smith has been unfazed. Since arriving in Oxford on July 21, 2015, Price-Smith and her staff have led the Rebels to new heights, winning 14 NCAA individual titles (20 champions), 14 NCAA runners-up, 172 First or Second-Team All-Americans, 380 NCAA points, 76 SEC individual champions and a bevy of the best team finishes in program history at both the SEC and NCAA levels.
Price-Smith has put an indelible stamp in the Ole Miss record books, recording an incredible 32 total top-25 team finishes across both track (14) and cross country (18). Six of the nine all-time NCAA top-10 track finishes in Ole Miss history have come within the last four years under her watch: 2024 women's outdoor (5th), 2024 women's indoor (5th), 2023 women's indoor (10th), 2022 women's indoor (T-6th), 2022 men's indoor (T-10th) and 2021 men's indoor (10th).
And it hasn't just been with throwers. It's been with a full team, just as she's always set out to do.
Trumpet blasts still aren't her style, but she's got quite a brag sheet to her name if she ever wants to start.
Gallery: (12-17-2024) Connie Price-Smith: Career in Pictures
Photos courtesy of: John Smith; The Southern Illinoisan; Saluki Athletics; Ole Miss Athletics
OXFORD, Miss. – When Ole Miss track & field head coach Connie Price-Smith is inducted into the USTFCCCA Coaches Hall of Fame tonight, it will be the sixth such honor of her career.
She is a member of the Saluki Hall of Fame (1990), the Drake Relays Hall of Fame (2003), the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame (2012), the St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame (2014) and the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame (2016), but this will be the first such honor for Price-Smith solely as a coach. She is one of just 10 total inductees and one of two women alongside Nell Jackson to ever earn a spot in both the USATF Hall of Fame as an athlete and the USTFCCCA Hall of Fame as a coach.
Follow along as we take a trip through Price-Smith's spectacular career, from her humble beginnings in the St. Louis area, to her time as a basketball star at Southern Illinois, to her evolution into one of the best throwers in American history, and finally into one of the most respected and successful track coaches in the United States.
-----
EARLY YEARS (1962-80) – St. Charles, Missouri
Connie Price was born in 1962 to Ella and James Price in St. Charles, Missouri – a St. Louis suburb on the banks of the Missouri River – where James worked in a brick factory and as a mechanic for Ford.
Price was a gifted athlete, sprouting up to 6-foot-1 as a ninth grader and 6-foot-3 by her senior year at St. Charles High. Coach Judy Lowery described her first sight of Price to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Dave Dorr as a "jaw-dropper."
Price successfully petitioned the school board to let her compete in four sports. And she was superb in all of them.
She starred on the basketball, softball and volleyball teams, and Price was an all-around talent on the track, winning two state titles in the shot put, posting a high jump PR of 5-foot-11 and a 100-yard dash best of 11.2. Price also anchored the 4x100-meter relay and triple jumped, while Lowery recalled her as the fastest on the team. "Every kid on the team would stop what they were doing to watch her run," Lowery told Dorr in 1987.
But basketball is where her talent shined the brightest. At St. Charles High, Price led the Pirates to a 64-12 record in three seasons as a starter, earning two All-Gateway honors. As a senior, she averaged 15.3 points and 11.3 rebounds, pushing St. Charles to the Class 4A regional final and a 25-3 record.
Her athletic gifts were creating once unthinkable opportunities, and with them she promised her mother she was going to college. But her gentle spirit masked how incredible an athlete she was.
"We never heard her brag," James Price told the Post-Dispatch in 1987. "They say the one who brags on himself is half scandal."
Dorr's 1987 feature supplied this anecdote about her humble nature: "[Price] goes about pursuing her goals without a word, almost as one who prefers to remain in the shadows. Trumpet blasts are not her style. But rarely does she fail. And rarely is she not true to her word."
BASKETBALL STAR (1980-84) – Carbondale, Illinois
Price enrolled at Southern Illinois in the fall of 1980 on a basketball scholarship but had hoped to also fit in track – giving her an agonizing choice in her first days in Carbondale.
After seeking guidance from Lowery, she decided to hold off on track to focus on basketball. Cindy Scott – SIU's women's basketball coach from 1978-98, the winningest coach in program history – recalled to the Post-Dispatch in 1987 that she wasn't sure Price would survive her first year in college.
"She was extremely shy," Scott said. "Of all the players I've coached, she is the one who really blossomed as a person. She learned to trust people and, as she did, she began to like herself. She learned to appreciate her size as a gift from God. She's not shy now. She's a confident young lady."
"She was so much bigger and stronger than anyone we played, so she held back," Scott told Sports Illustrated's Merrell Noden in a 1999 feature. "She didn't want to hurt anybody."
Price learning to embrace her size took her skills on the basketball court to new levels, and with her came the Salukis.
Price helped lead Southern to a 75-47 record, including a 22-11 campaign her junior season in 1982-83. That year, Price was leading the nation in field goal percentage before a fractured finger sidelined her – finishing the season third at a .650 clip from the field. All told, Price scored 1,271 points as a Saluki and still ranks fifth all-time in field goal percentage (.571) and 10th in rebounding (744).
Price considered a professional career in Italy, but track & field called back to her through the urging of two key figures: SIU women's track coach Don DeNoon, and her future husband and professional coach, John Smith.
DeNoon had never given up the dream of Price on his team. With basketball in the rearview and an extra season of eligibility available, DeNoon would have his chance in 1985.
ENTER JOHN SMITH (1985) – Carbondale, Illinois
John Smith has carved a legacy as one of the premier throws coaches in the United States, with protegees at dozens of Division I schools and scores of national titles to his credit. But for Smith, it starts and ends with the day Connie Price walked into his life.
While Price was dominating on the hardwood, Smith was an All-American shot putter at Southern Illinois from 1980-84. Smith won eight MVC titles across the shot put, discus and hammer and was part of a legendary 1984 squad that posted two top-10 national finishes.
Smith's recollection of his first time seeing Price would become the nexus of nearly every feature story written on the pair in the decades to come.
"I kind of looked at her," Smith told Dorr in a 1987 interview of his first sight of her years earlier. "I looked again. I said to myself 'If God ever made a discus thrower, she was it.'"
Smith would have his chance to prove himself right as a graduate assistant coach in 1985. DeNoon handed the reins of Price's training to Smith, and Price took to the shot put immediately, winning conference titles both indoor and outdoor in 1985.
The discus took more time. After learning the techniques over spring break, progress was slow. She fouled the first two attempts of her first meet before sending her third out only 98 feet. Price is said to have slammed her discus and vowed to never throw it again. "Oh, yes you will," Smith shot back.
Whether she knew it or not, that extra season in Carbondale was the beginning of a 15-year professional career as a thrower and the start of a lifelong association with the sport she agonized putting on hold just a few years earlier.
Smith? He knew immediately.
"After watching her throw for three days, I went and got her a passport," Smith recalled to Sports Illustrated in 1999. "I told myself 'If she's not national champion in two years, I quit.'"
CALLING, FOUND (June 27, 1987) – San Jose, California
A little over two years later, Connie Price was in the ring at San Jose City College's Jaguar Stadium for the U.S. discus final. When she let her best throw of the day fly, the distance read 212 feet, five inches – a far cry from that disappointing 98-foot open in 1985.
She not only fulfilled Smith's prophecy of winning a national title in two years, but she did so by nearly six feet and with what was then the fourth-best throw ever by an American woman.
Price became an overnight sensation in the track world, the future of the sport in the United States and perhaps the best throwing prospect the Americans had against the otherworldly numbers coming from the other side of the Iron Curtain.
The next morning in St. Charles, her father James did his own version of trumpet blasting: unfurling and hanging an American flag outside the family home. Dave Dorr described it as such:
"A wiry man of 83, Price was making a statement of pride. He couldn't shout from the rooftops, so the flag said what he wanted to say."
IN THE SPOTLIGHT (1987-2001)
What followed was an unprecedented string of success for an American women's thrower. Four Olympic Games appearances. A spot on every U.S. team beginning from that day in San Jose in 1987 until the end of her career nearly 15 years later. A whopping 25 national titles, the most by any American women's thrower. Seven international medals, including the best ever at the time by an American woman in the shot put with a World Championship silver in 1995.
And by her side was John Smith, whom Price married in 1990 amid their globe-trotting adventures on the professional throwing circuits.
The duo called a lot of different places home during Price-Smith's pro career. But none could replicate the Smith family farm in Portage, Indiana. A 16-acre mowed swath of land hand-crafted by the Smiths themselves and cited by USA Today in 1993 as one of America's "fields of dreams," it featured several throwing rings and a weightlifting gym in the garage for both Price-Smith and the throng of local throwers trained by Smith.
"I'd come home and there'd be like 25 high school kids waiting for John in the backyard," Price-Smith told Sports Illustrated in 1999.
However, Price-Smith's early career coincided with rampant use of performance enhancing drugs across the sport, something that became obvious upon arriving in Seoul for the 1988 Summer Olympics. The frustration of competing against widespread cheating and the increasing drumbeat of outside voices attempting to separate Connie from John nearly drove her from the sport.
In the end, though, they were unsuccessful.
"[My career] is what I want to do and I want to do it for me and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or says," Price-Smith told the Post-Dispatch ahead of the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials. "As long as John and I and my family accept what I'm doing, then there's no problem."
The quest to give Price-Smith the credit she deserves drives John Smith, who has attempted to discern what the "clean" world record is – a title that Connie had a very good likelihood of owning at one point or another with her career-bests in the discus and shot put.
But by 1999 in the twilight of her career, Connie had moved on.
"I don't read that stuff," she told Sports Illustrated that year. "I'd like to think that the world's not like that. I live in a Norman Rockwell world."
"[Connie] is raw talent," Don DeNoon told the Post-Dispatch back in 1987. "The kid's on candy bars. Connie Price loves candy."
Connie Price-Smith had given American track & field something it had never seen out of a woman thrower. And in 1996, the sport was giving something back to her: the chance to compete for the United States on her own soil, and in the prime of her career.
A TWIST OF FATE (August 2, 1996) – Atlanta, Georgia
Price-Smith was ready for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.
She was no novice. This was her third Olympics, with her first coming in Seoul in 1988 and her second in Barcelona in 1992 – the latter of which she lost 12 pounds during while staying in an Olympic Village with no air-conditioning.
Both her and John had learned from their previous two trips. They splurged for a hotel outside of the Olympic Village, yet close to the practice track. But Price-Smith – ever the rule-follower – returned to the Village prior to the final in observance of an IOC rule stating competing athletes had to depart from Olympic Village.
"She never did and still doesn't consider herself better than anyone else," said her old high school coach Judy Lowery to the Post-Dispatch back in 1988.
As fate would have it, an ill-timed fire alarm while she was in the shower sent her up and down the stairs 90 minutes before the final – aggravating a knee she had injured the year prior.
Despite all that, Price-Smith finished fifth at 63 feet and a half-inch – at the time the best throw ever by an American woman in the Olympics and the highest finish by an American in the shot put since Earlene Brown's bronze in Rome in 1960. That throw left her five inches off the podium – five inches Price-Smith could easily attribute to the unfortunate fire alarm, but chose not to.
Price-Smith's response to that question from the Indianapolis Star's David Woods in 1997 was in reference to her father, James, who had died in 1993: "He was very mellow, the kind of guy who liked to lay out under a tree in a hammock," Price-Smith said. "He said things happen for a reason."
TWILIGHT (1997-2001)
After Atlanta, Price-Smith knew the 2000 Olympic cycle would be her last. She made five more World finals the remainder of her career until 2001, and she did indeed make Team USA for a fourth Olympics in Sydney – becoming one of just 14 American women at the time to ever compete in four Olympiads.
The increase of drug testing around the world after the late '80s surge and the fall of the Iron Curtain helped even the playing field, giving Price-Smith a late-stage career resurgence that kept her interest in the sport.
"We used to struggle to make a final," John Smith told Sports Illustrated in 1999. "Now, if Connie throws well, she gets a medal. That's kept her in the sport. If [the level of drug use] had stayed where it was in 1988, she would have gotten out."
The Smiths had moved their operations to Bloomington back in 1993, where Price-Smith studied massage therapy and began working around her throwing schedule at the Iron Pit gym. The money in track & field has never been lucrative in the throws, but for Price-Smith it all came down to her love of the sport – including fun outside competitions like setting the U.S. deadlifting record at 501 pounds and two still-standing Highlands Games records in Scotland in the open stone and standing stone.
"I [compete] because I love doing it," Price-Smith told the Indianapolis Star in 1997. "And I would do it regardless if there were no publicity, if there were no money, if there were no anything. I would still do it."
But the biggest role Price-Smith took on in these latter years is one that would serve her well in years to come as one of the nation's top college track coaches: mentor.
"It's hard to imagine track and field without Connie around," said American hammer great and cage designer Lance Deal to Sports Illustrated in 1999. "She's the peacemaker. She has nothing bad to say about anybody."
HAIL, ALMA MATER (2001-15) – Carbondale, Illinois
Price-Smith didn't have to wait long for the phone to ring at the end of her professional career. In the fall of 2001 after her retirement, Southern Illinois asked if she was interested in running the Saluki women's program.
John Smith had been coaching at Ohio State since 1999, where he turned the Buckeyes into a national force in the throws. But by 2004, SIU had given Connie the reins to the combined track & field and cross country programs, which enticed Smith to return to his roots in Carbondale.
From there, the duo helped further Southern's reputation as a mid-major track powerhouse. Under Price-Smith's leadership, the Salukis won 12 conference team titles across track & field and cross country. On the track alone, SIU under Price-Smith won six MVC team trophies, scored 229 NCAA points, coached 72 All-Americans, eight NCAA champions and seven NCAA runners-up while earning 11 NCAA top-25 team finishes.
Hidden in those numbers are scores of spectacular athletes, from world record holders to freshman phenoms to all-around great teams that scored in bunches to bring home conference team titles.
Price-Smith's talents as a head coach mirror those she had as an athlete. Incredible work ethic. Gentle spirit. Easy listening ear. Tenacity, but in a different way than when she was in the ring.
"I just love being around the kids and teaching and the paperwork," Price-Smith told the Post-Dispatch's Kathleen Nelson in 2008.
Yes, the paperwork. And anyone who has ever worked with her can attest. Meticulously laid out binders of papers and never-ending checklists dot her desk, despite all her coaching duties and outside committee work as one of the most respected coaches in the industry.
All these years later, it's still the details that help Price-Smith excel.
"The paperwork: the scheduling, the lists to check off, the day-to-day stuff that makes it all work together," she continued in 2008. "When you put the details together right, you see the big picture clearly."
TRACK ROYALTY (2016) – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Walk around any track meet with Connie Price-Smith and take note of how many people stop her to say hello, to talk shop, to ask for advice. Her status as "track royalty" – as John Smith dubs it – is evident at any event from the smallest of regular season meets to national championships to the biggest stage of all: the Olympic Games.
Price-Smith's respect in the track world garnered her numerous prior appointments on national coaching staffs for Team USA – including prior Olympic stints as an assistant in Beijing (2008) and London (2012) – but just days before taking the job at Ole Miss in 2015 she was awarded the highest coaching title of her career: head women's coach for the United States track & field team at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio.
"I think we have a good team going down there to Rio," Price-Smith said at an Ole Miss press conference. "We go from men and women from 16- to 41-year-olds. I think everyone that competed in trials competed well and we will go down to Rio and do the same."
Price-Smith's Team USA did just that, winning six gold medals – several coming in historic fashion. The U.S. swept the top three spots in the women's 100-meter hurdles, the first such sweep of the event in Olympic history, and had additional gold medal wins in the 400-meter hurdles, 4x100 and 4x400-meter relays and the women's long jump.
But it was in the shot put where destiny came calling for Price-Smith as Team USA's head coach. In Atlanta 20 years earlier, Price-Smith finished fifth and was five inches shy of becoming the first American woman to medal in the event since 1960. Michelle Carter did so in stunning fashion, winning the first gold medal for the United States at a new American record 67 feet, 8.25 inches.
And not far behind her? Then Ole Miss sophomore Raven Saunders in fifth place, the youngest American to ever make the final.
HOTTY TODDY (2015-Present) – Oxford, Mississippi
Price-Smith's name always seemed to pop up for power conference track jobs, but it was when Ole Miss came calling in 2015 – just weeks after pulling off one of the best days in SIU track history – that she and John agreed to take the leap.
Price-Smith had just led Southern to two NCAA top-12 finishes on the women's side in 2015, powered by three NCAA titles. But the SEC is a juggernaut in track & field, where it's arguably easier to place higher at NCAAs than its buzzsaw conference championship meets.
But Ole Miss under Price-Smith has been unfazed. Since arriving in Oxford on July 21, 2015, Price-Smith and her staff have led the Rebels to new heights, winning 14 NCAA individual titles (20 champions), 14 NCAA runners-up, 172 First or Second-Team All-Americans, 380 NCAA points, 76 SEC individual champions and a bevy of the best team finishes in program history at both the SEC and NCAA levels.
Price-Smith has put an indelible stamp in the Ole Miss record books, recording an incredible 32 total top-25 team finishes across both track (14) and cross country (18). Six of the nine all-time NCAA top-10 track finishes in Ole Miss history have come within the last four years under her watch: 2024 women's outdoor (5th), 2024 women's indoor (5th), 2023 women's indoor (10th), 2022 women's indoor (T-6th), 2022 men's indoor (T-10th) and 2021 men's indoor (10th).
And it hasn't just been with throwers. It's been with a full team, just as she's always set out to do.
Trumpet blasts still aren't her style, but she's got quite a brag sheet to her name if she ever wants to start.
The Season: New Heights (2025)
Friday, August 01
From Walk-On to National Champ: Arvesta Troupe (T&F)
Monday, June 23
HIGHLIGHTS: Arvesta Troupe Makes History as NCAA High Jump Champ
Friday, June 13
PRESSER: Arvesta Troupe Talks Historic NCAA High Jump Win
Friday, June 13