John Smith - Track and Field Coach - Ole Miss Athletics

John Smith

Title:
Assistant Coach - Throws
Year at Ole Miss:
11th
Email:
jjsmith4@olemiss.edu
Phone:
662-915-7538
Alma Mater:
Southern Illinois (1984)

World-renowned throws coach John Smith is in his 11th season on the Ole Miss track & field staff heading into the 2025-26 season.

Smith boasts a lengthy resume beyond reproach in the world of elite-level throwing, owning success at every level of the sport from the high school ranks all the way to the Olympic Games. In his career, Smith has journeyed from his home of Portage, Indiana to an All-American stint at his alma mater, Southern Illinois, to the grueling professional coaching circuit while guiding his wife – four-time Olympian Connie Price-Smith – and eventually to the collegiate arena, where Smith’s throwers have dominated at Ohio State, Southern Illinois, and now, Ole Miss.

In total, Smith has coached four Olympians who have made 10 cumulative trips to the Games, 34 United States national champions, 19 NCAA Champions, 11 NCAA runners-up, 123 All-Americans and 106 conference champions. His squads have scored an impressive 508 points at the NCAA Indoor or Outdoor Championship meets since his first year at Ohio State in 2000, contributing to 35 top-25 national team finishes in that span. Smith has been named USTFCCCA Assistant Coach of the Year six times in his career, five times in the Midwest region while at SIU and once in 2017 as a Rebel in the South region.

Since arriving in Oxford in 2016, Smith has already laid siege to the Ole Miss record book, toppling 18 all-time standards while his throwers have racked up nine NCAA titles, two NCAA runners-up, 38 All-American awards, 23 SEC titles and scored 209 points at the national meet and 648 points at the high-powered SEC meets.

Among his numerous success stories so far at Ole Miss are:

• Three-time Olympian Raven Saunders, who won four NCAA titles under his tutelage (two at Southern Illinois, two at Ole Miss) and reset both national indoor and outdoor collegiate records during her bombastic career.

• 2018 NCAA Champion and numerous time All-American Janeah Stewart, who blossomed into one of the United States’ most promising young throwers across both the shot put and hammer.

• SEC Champion and All-American discus thrower Brian Williams, who went on to make Team USA for three separate World Championship meets.

• A lethal women’s weight throw unit led by Shey Taiwo, Jasmine Mitchell and Jalani Davis who combined for three NCAA titles and 61 points scored in a dominant run in the event from 2021-24. Taiwo won in 2022, Davis went back-to-back in 2023 and 2024, and Mitchell took runner-up in 2022. Davis also became the first woman in world history to break 60 feet in the shot put and 80 feet in the weight throw.

• Tarik Robinson-O'Hagan, who stands among the best combination throwers in both collegiate and world history. Robinson-O'Hagan has three NCAA titles to his name, as well as the collegiate record in combined shot put/hammer PRs.

• Akaoma Odeluga, who won the World U20 shot put title in 2024 and ranks as one of only two women in collegiate history at 62 feet in the shot put and 210 feet in the hammer.

Prior to coming to Ole Miss, Smith was on his wife’s staff at their shared alma mater, Southern Illinois, which the duo had turned into a fearsome throws powerhouse to add onto a storied track legacy in Carbondale. An All-American shot putter himself while a student-athlete at SIU, he had unparalleled success in his coaching tenure at his alma mater. Over 11 seasons, he accumulated eight NCAA champions, 52 All-Americans, 66 Missouri Valley Conference champions, one NCAA Indoor National Athlete of the Year and one world record in the women's weight throw.

Smith closed out his tenure at Southern in spectacular fashion, with his throwers putting on one of the most dominant showings in the ring across the nation in 2015. With the arrival of all-time girls' national record holder Raven Saunders and the return of the injured DeAnna Price, Smith was in possession of perhaps his best throws squad of his career, and they did not disappoint. Saunders immediately announced her presence as the best in the country, shattering the SIU, MVC, MVC Championships and American Junior indoor and outdoor shot put records en route to two NCAA shot put titles – both won in dramatic fashion on her very last throw.

Price turned heads after a third-place finish in the weight throw at the indoor national meet, but proceeded to stun the world by winning the NCAA hammer throw title outdoors on a gargantuan NCAA meet record heave of 71.49m/234-6 – making her the third-best hammer thrower in NCAA history.

Earlier in the season, Smith and his throwers led a clinic on the conference level, scoring an impossible 216 MVC meet points in 2014-15. Smith actually only lost one MVC event all season: the women's discus. The efforts of his male throwers – particularly in the discus on day three – helped the Saluki men win their first outdoor MVC title since 1992.

As a student-athlete at SIU from 1980-84, Smith won eight MVC titles in the shot put, discus and hammer and set records in both the indoor and outdoor shot put that stood until 2015 and 2016. He was part of the legendary 1984 squad that won 13 All-American certificates and two NCAA runners-up that finished fifth outdoors and ninth indoors nationally. In 2007, Smith was named to the MVC's All-Centennial Team.

After he graduated in 1984, Smith was a member of two Olympic Festival teams and a part of the USA vs. Great Britain national team. He participated in five national championships, with his highest finish being seventh in the shot put.

Before hitting the collegiate coaching scene, Smith was involved with personal high school coaching in the shot put and discus since 1980. He trained 20 Indiana state champions and five Track and Field News High School All-Americans. Two of his student-athletes were national champions and five were named to the U.S. Junior National Team.

He began his collegiate coaching career as a postgraduate volunteer assistant coach and strength and conditioning assistant at SIU from 1984-86, where he coached his future wife Connie Price-Smith and SIU's first female All-American Rhonda McCausland. From there, Smith continued his tour as a professional coach, following Price-Smith's highly successful professional career over the next decade. In 1999, he was hired as the throws coach at Ohio State, where he stayed until Southern came calling for him to return to Carbondale five years later.

At OSU, Smith coached a slew of magnificent throwers but two that stood out during his tenure were two-time NCAA champion Dan Taylor and future Saluki, Amarachi Ukabam.

Taylor, a nine-time All-American, two-time Big Ten Indoor/Outdoor Male Athlete of the Year, Ohio State Athlete of the Year and Region V Athlete of the Year, established OSU and Big Ten records in the indoor weight throw and set OSU standards in the hammer and discus outdoors as well. Most notably, Taylor became the first thrower in NCAA history to win both the indoor shot put and weight throw national titles in the same season.

Smith also helped establish one of the finest freshman campaigns by an OSU student-athlete with his mentoring of Amarachi Ukabam to Big Ten and NCAA Mideast Regional titles in the discus in 2004. Ukabam followed Smith to SIU later that year, where she became a five-time All-American and broke seven MVC records in her first season as a Saluki in 2005.

Ukabam competed alongside Brittany Riley, who in 2007 would bring worldwide acclaim to Southern with her world-record shattering mark of 25.56m/83-10.5 in the weight throw set as a Saluki on March 10, 2007. Riley was a six-time All-American who won two NCAA titles (weight throw, 2007-08) and was named the NCAA Indoor National Athlete of the Year in 2007.

Smith's Saluki throwers are responsible for two of the greatest seasons in Saluki track and field history. In 2009 the women's outdoor team finished ninth at the NCAA Outdoor Championships, the best finish in the women's program history and the third-best national finish ever at SIU. That outdoor season saw eight All-American certificates awarded to Saluki throwers, including sophomore Jeneva McCall's national title in the discus. Four women (McCall, Gwen Berry, Olga Ciura and Sasha Leeth) earned All-America honors in the hammer throw, the most All-America honors for one school in a single event in NCAA history.

In 2012, McCall concluded her SIU career in grand fashion with two NCAA titles (weight throw, hammer throw). Those two championships pushed her career total to three, which made her the winningest Saluki in history and the first ever to win multiple titles in the same season.

Of the 51 Missouri Valley Conference records SIU holds, 15 record holders were SIU throwers as of his departure in 2015 – 13 of which are pupils of John Smith since 2004.

Post-collegiately and internationally, Smith's throwers have gone on to compete successfully in the highly arduous professional throwing circuit. Some of his recent pupils include Saunders, weight throw world record holder and two-time Olympian, Gwen Berry, 2021 Olympian Jessica Ramsey, and successful veteran Jeneva (McCall) Stevens, who in 2013 became the first American woman to ever medal in the hammer throw in international competition with her gold medal victory at the World University Games in Kazan, Russia.

His most notable pupil in his professional coaching career is, of course, his wife -- current Ole Miss head coach Connie Price-Smith. From 1980-84, Price was a standout center on the Saluki basketball team. At the urging of Smith (then a postgraduate volunteer assistant coach), Price threw the shot put and discus in 1985, winning indoor and outdoor MVC shot put titles that very season.

What followed for Price was a 14-year professional career that included 25 U.S. titles and four trips to the Olympic Games with Team USA (Seoul, 1988; Barcelona, 1992; Atlanta, 1996; Sydney, 2000). Price became the first American woman to be world-ranked in the shot put for five consecutive seasons (1995-99), the first woman to win both the shot put and discus at an Olympic trial in 32 years (1992), the first American woman to win a World Championship medal in the shot put in 35 years (1995, silver), and her fifth-place finish in the shot put at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta was the highest finish by an American woman since 1960. In addition, Price-Smith won the gold medal at the Pan-American Games in 1999 just prior to Smith's hiring at Ohio State.

Price and Smith were married in 1990 and have been coaching together since Smith joined the SIU staff in 2004.

Career Notes:
• 4 Olympians (Connie Price-Smith, Gwen Berry, Raven Saunders, Jessica Ramsey)
• 19 NCAA Champions (nine at Ole Miss)
• 11 NCAA Runners-Up (two at Ole Miss)
• 508 NCAA meet points (209 at Ole Miss)
• One NCAA Indoor National Athlete of the Year (Brittany Riley, 2007)
• 123 First or Second-Team All-Americans (38 at Ole Miss, 49 at SIU, 19 at Ohio State)
• 23 SEC Champions, 63 MVC champions, 20 Big Ten champions (106 total)
• At Ole Miss, his throwers have scored 648 total SEC points
• His throwers have broken 18 Ole Miss records, 20 SIU records, 15 MVC records, five Big Ten records, two NCAA records, three NCAA meet records, one U.S. record, two U.S. junior records and two world records (both in the weight throw: Brittany Riley, 2007; Gwen Berry, 2017)
• Throwers have helped contribute to 35 NCAA top-25 team finishes since 2000
• Coached a throwing champion every year from 1987-2010 on the NCAA, USATF Senior, USATF Junior or high school level
• Coached 34 USA Indoor and Outdoor National Champions
• His athletes have made Team USA in the Olympic Games, World Indoor and Outdoor Championships, Pan American Games, Pan American Junior Games, Goodwill Games, World Cup, Grand Prix Final, World University Games and the World Junior Games, with a total of 21 international medals.
• Six-time USTFCCCA Regional Assistant Coach of the Year (Midwest: 2005, 2010, 2011, 2015; South: 2017)
• 2015 USTFCCCA National Women's Assistant Coach of the Year
• All-American in the indoor shot put in 1984

COACHING CAREER
Year(s)	School	Position
2015-Pres.	Ole Miss	Assistant Coach / Throws
2004-15	Southern Illinois	Assistant Coach / Throws
1999-04	Ohio State	Assistant Coach / Throws