The University of Mississippi Athletics
Track and Field
Acklin, Anthony
Anthony Acklin
- Title:
- Assistant Coach - Sprints, Hurdles
- Year at Ole Miss:
- Sixth
- E-mail:
- aeacklin@olemiss.edu
- Phone:
- 662-915-7538
- Alma Mater:
- Southern Illinois (2006)
Anthony Acklin is in his sixth season in charge of the Ole Miss sprinters and hurdlers in 2020-21.
In his five seasons at Ole Miss, Acklin has started to make a dent in the highly-competitive sprints scene in the SEC, sending 18 of his athletes to the NCAA Championships for 14 All-America honors. A total of 33 of his athletes have scored at the SEC meet, and he has started to leave his mark on the Ole Miss record books as well – particularly on the women’s side where a sizeable portion of the indoor and outdoor top lists belong to athletes he has coached. Outdoors specifically, Acklin has coached a total of 43 entries into the NCAA East Regional, which has included at least eight each season.
Acklin is coming off a 2020 indoor season in which both Brandee Presley and Jayda Eckford toppled school records and qualified for the NCAA Championships in just their sophomore seasons. Presley opened the year with a demonstrative 60-meter dash school record of 7.18, breaking All-American Teneeshia Jones' record of 7.28 from the 2001 season. Eckford, meanwhile, put together a spectacular SEC Championship meet, breaking Jones' Ole Miss record twice in the 200-meter dash in the prelim (23.29) and the final (23.18), where she scored in fifth place. Both Rebels earned All-America honors for qualifying for the national meet before it was cancelled due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2019 season saw a dismantling of the Ole Miss women's record book by a stunning freshman class led by Jayda Eckford, Brandee Presley and Kelly Rowe. All three were members of the Rebel women's 4x100-meter relay team alongside junior Kaira Simmons that took down the Ole Miss record twice, including the latest record of 43.45 at the regional meet to punch a ticket to the NCAA Championships. At the national meet in Austin, the Rebels finished 12th for Second-Team All-American honors.
Individually, Eckford and Presley had astonishing first seasons in the Red and Navy. Both represented Team USA at the Pan American U20 Championships, with Presley winning a gold medal as the anchor on Team USA's 4x100-meter relay and a bronze in the 100-meter dash, while Eckford added a silver as an American one-two punch in the 200-meter dash. For her efforts, Presley became the first Rebel woman to ever win gold at the Pan American U20 Championships and the first to win multiple medals in a single meet.
Presley's rise began at the NCAA East Regional, where she broke the formchart and punched her ticket to the NCAA Championships despite ranking 43rd entering the meet. At NCAAs, Presley wound up 12th overall in the 100-meter for Second-Team All-American status. Over the course of the outdoor season, Presley saw her 100-meter best fall from a season-open of 11.67 (+0.4) to school record of 11.19 (+2.0) to win the U.S. U20 championship, which made her the first Rebel to ever break the 11.20 barrier at any wind reading.
Eckford has had equally as prodigious a freshman season, winning a U.S. U20 silver medal in the 200-meter and Second-Team All-American honors in the 200-meter at the NCAA Championships following an 11th-place finish. Eckford had a spectacular weekend of racing at the U.S. U20 Championships, running both a wind-legal school record in the prelim (22.98, +0.6) and an all-conditions record of 22.72 (+2.2) to win the U.S. silver.
Acklin said goodbye to some of the best women’s sprinters to ever run at Ole Miss in 2018, as the strong careers of Jolie Carbo, Nicole Henderson and Shannon Ray came to a close. All three were on the 4x100-meter relay squad that qualified for the NCAA Championships for the fourth-straight season, alongside sophomore Jeanette Paul. The quartet finished 15th overall for Second-Team All-American honors. In just the 2018 season alone, the Rebel women recorded seven of the top-15 women’s 4x100 times in Ole Miss history, with the top time of 43.94 from the NCAA East Regional registering at No. 5 all-time that punched their ticket to Eugene.
Carbo and Ray also had stellar individual senior seasons, qualifying for the NCAA East Regional in the 400 and 100-meter races, respectively. Carbo became one of the best 400-meter runners in Ole Miss history, running PRs of 52.78 outdoors (fifth all-time) and 53.30 indoors (second all-time). Ray, meanwhile, nearly toppled the 18-year-old 100-meter record of 11.24 set by Teneeshia Jones in 2000, opening the outdoor season with an NCAA wind-legal 11.25 (3.5) out at USC in the Trailblazer Challenge.
Acklin also mentored quarter-miler sophomore Alvin Westbrook in 2018, who played a key part in the NCAA qualifying distance medley relay indoors. Westbrook ran the 400-meter leg on three different DMRs indoors in 2018 that ranked within the all-time top-15, the best being 9:37.08 at the SEC Championships for silver medal honors.
Westbrook is the latest DMR pupil of Acklin’s, as the year prior in 2017 he helped guide freshman Nick DeRay to an effort that helped Ole Miss win its first-ever NCAA relay title alongside distance runners Craig Engels, Robert Domanic and Sean Tobin. That group ran the second-fastest time in school history to win the national title at 9:31.32, and just weeks earlier won their fourth-straight conference DMR title at the fourth-best time of 9:32.36.
Acklin’s first-year in Oxford in 2016 saw impressive performances out of Khadijah Suleman, who left Ole Miss with her name all over the Rebel record book under Acklin’s tutelage. During that season, Suleman clocked the second-fastest indoor 200-meter time in school history at 23.65 at the SEC Championships, as well as the fourth-best 60-meter time of 7.38 also at the conference meet. Outdoors she was equally successful, running the second-best 100-meter time of 11.39 and the fourth-best 200-meter time at 23.26.
Acklin followed Ole Miss head coach Connie Price-Smith to Oxford after serving one year on her staff at his alma mater, Southern Illinois University.
In 2015, Acklin's young Saluki sprinters showed significant improvement from previous years. Freshman Mystique Thompson took SIU's record book by storm, clocking in the third-best 60-meter time (7.55), fifth-best indoor 200 (24.74), fourth-best 100 (11.66) and seventh-best outdoor 200 (24.11) in school history. Acklin was also able to get production out of 100 and 200-meter sprinter Tyrone Echols, All-MVC hurdler Remy Abrought, 400-meter All-Missouri Valley Conference honoree Nikolai Gall, 400-meter sophomore Jessica Jump and utility man Kemar Jones. In his lone season in Carbondale, Acklin sent three of his sprinters to the NCAA West Regional in Thompson, Gall and Abrought.
Acklin came back to Carbondale after two successful stints as an assistant coach at the NJCAA level at Iowa Central Community College (2009-14) and Rend Lake College (2006-09).
At Iowa Central, Acklin was part of seven NJCAA National Championship teams with the Tritons - one of the top junior college track programs in the country. While on staff, the Triton men won the indoor national title three times (2011, 2012, 2014) and the women won three indoor titles (2010, 2012, 2014) and one outdoor title (2013). With Iowa Central, Acklin was named the NJCAA Indoor Assistant Coach of the Year three times -- most recently in 2014 with the Triton women. In 2011 alone, Acklin coached three Triton male hurdlers who ran 13.90 seconds or faster in the 110-meter hurdles at the national meet outdoors, and among them they won both the 110 and 400 hurdle titles that year.
Acklin had similar success with Rend Lake in his three seasons in Ina, Ill. The Warriors swept both the men's and women's indoor NJCAA national titles in 2008 with Acklin on staff - the only two national titles in Rend Lake track history.
In eight years as an assistant coach at the junior college level, Acklin produced 97 All-Americans and 43 NJCAA National Champions.
Some of Acklin's most prominent pupils have gone on to compete for their own national teams. At Iowa Central, Acklin coached four national team members: Adriana Bradford (USA, 2010), Nathan Arnett (Bahamas, 2010-11), Teshon Adderley (Bahamas, 2012) and Reyare Thomas (Trinidad and Tobago, 2011-12). Bradford was a member of Team USA for the 2010 Thorp Cup; Arnett, an eventual DI transfer to Mississippi State, was the 2010 Bahamian 400-meter hurdle runner-up and NACAC team member; Adderley, who later transferred to Minnesota, was a member of the Bahamian CAC and World Junior Team; and Thomas, who eventually transferred to Abilene Christian, represented Trinidad and Tobago in the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 London Olympics.
Acklin's most famous pupil, though, is Olympic silver medalist Ryan Bailey. Acklin coached Bailey at Rend Lake, where Bailey won two individual NJCAA titles (indoor 55-meter dash, outdoor 100 meter dash). In the 2012 London Games, Bailey was the anchor on the American 4x100-meter relay with Tyson Gay, Justin Gatlin and Trell Kimmons that won silver and broke the all-time U.S. record in 37.04, finishing second to Usain Bolt's Jamaican team. Bailey was also a finalist in the 100, where he finished fifth.
Acklin is a 2006 SIU graduate with a bachelor's degree in liberal arts and was a three-time MVC Champion for the Salukis on the track from 2004-06, with 110-meter hurdle titles in 2005 and 2006 and a 4x100-meter relay crown in 2006. He still ranks high in the SIU record books in the 110-meter hurdles (13.68) and the indoor 60-meter hurdles (7.92). That 110-meter time finished as the sixth-best in the NCAA in 2006.
Before SIU, Acklin was a two-time NJCAA All-American at Wallace State Community College. He is a native of Glassboro, New Jersey, where he went to Triton Regional High School and was inducted into Triton's Athletic Hall of Fame in 2013. As of Feb. 2015, Acklin is a USATF Level III and IAAF Level V certified coach in sprints and hurdles, the highest possible certification.
In his five seasons at Ole Miss, Acklin has started to make a dent in the highly-competitive sprints scene in the SEC, sending 18 of his athletes to the NCAA Championships for 14 All-America honors. A total of 33 of his athletes have scored at the SEC meet, and he has started to leave his mark on the Ole Miss record books as well – particularly on the women’s side where a sizeable portion of the indoor and outdoor top lists belong to athletes he has coached. Outdoors specifically, Acklin has coached a total of 43 entries into the NCAA East Regional, which has included at least eight each season.
Acklin is coming off a 2020 indoor season in which both Brandee Presley and Jayda Eckford toppled school records and qualified for the NCAA Championships in just their sophomore seasons. Presley opened the year with a demonstrative 60-meter dash school record of 7.18, breaking All-American Teneeshia Jones' record of 7.28 from the 2001 season. Eckford, meanwhile, put together a spectacular SEC Championship meet, breaking Jones' Ole Miss record twice in the 200-meter dash in the prelim (23.29) and the final (23.18), where she scored in fifth place. Both Rebels earned All-America honors for qualifying for the national meet before it was cancelled due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The 2019 season saw a dismantling of the Ole Miss women's record book by a stunning freshman class led by Jayda Eckford, Brandee Presley and Kelly Rowe. All three were members of the Rebel women's 4x100-meter relay team alongside junior Kaira Simmons that took down the Ole Miss record twice, including the latest record of 43.45 at the regional meet to punch a ticket to the NCAA Championships. At the national meet in Austin, the Rebels finished 12th for Second-Team All-American honors.
Individually, Eckford and Presley had astonishing first seasons in the Red and Navy. Both represented Team USA at the Pan American U20 Championships, with Presley winning a gold medal as the anchor on Team USA's 4x100-meter relay and a bronze in the 100-meter dash, while Eckford added a silver as an American one-two punch in the 200-meter dash. For her efforts, Presley became the first Rebel woman to ever win gold at the Pan American U20 Championships and the first to win multiple medals in a single meet.
Presley's rise began at the NCAA East Regional, where she broke the formchart and punched her ticket to the NCAA Championships despite ranking 43rd entering the meet. At NCAAs, Presley wound up 12th overall in the 100-meter for Second-Team All-American status. Over the course of the outdoor season, Presley saw her 100-meter best fall from a season-open of 11.67 (+0.4) to school record of 11.19 (+2.0) to win the U.S. U20 championship, which made her the first Rebel to ever break the 11.20 barrier at any wind reading.
Eckford has had equally as prodigious a freshman season, winning a U.S. U20 silver medal in the 200-meter and Second-Team All-American honors in the 200-meter at the NCAA Championships following an 11th-place finish. Eckford had a spectacular weekend of racing at the U.S. U20 Championships, running both a wind-legal school record in the prelim (22.98, +0.6) and an all-conditions record of 22.72 (+2.2) to win the U.S. silver.
Acklin said goodbye to some of the best women’s sprinters to ever run at Ole Miss in 2018, as the strong careers of Jolie Carbo, Nicole Henderson and Shannon Ray came to a close. All three were on the 4x100-meter relay squad that qualified for the NCAA Championships for the fourth-straight season, alongside sophomore Jeanette Paul. The quartet finished 15th overall for Second-Team All-American honors. In just the 2018 season alone, the Rebel women recorded seven of the top-15 women’s 4x100 times in Ole Miss history, with the top time of 43.94 from the NCAA East Regional registering at No. 5 all-time that punched their ticket to Eugene.
Carbo and Ray also had stellar individual senior seasons, qualifying for the NCAA East Regional in the 400 and 100-meter races, respectively. Carbo became one of the best 400-meter runners in Ole Miss history, running PRs of 52.78 outdoors (fifth all-time) and 53.30 indoors (second all-time). Ray, meanwhile, nearly toppled the 18-year-old 100-meter record of 11.24 set by Teneeshia Jones in 2000, opening the outdoor season with an NCAA wind-legal 11.25 (3.5) out at USC in the Trailblazer Challenge.
Acklin also mentored quarter-miler sophomore Alvin Westbrook in 2018, who played a key part in the NCAA qualifying distance medley relay indoors. Westbrook ran the 400-meter leg on three different DMRs indoors in 2018 that ranked within the all-time top-15, the best being 9:37.08 at the SEC Championships for silver medal honors.
Westbrook is the latest DMR pupil of Acklin’s, as the year prior in 2017 he helped guide freshman Nick DeRay to an effort that helped Ole Miss win its first-ever NCAA relay title alongside distance runners Craig Engels, Robert Domanic and Sean Tobin. That group ran the second-fastest time in school history to win the national title at 9:31.32, and just weeks earlier won their fourth-straight conference DMR title at the fourth-best time of 9:32.36.
Acklin’s first-year in Oxford in 2016 saw impressive performances out of Khadijah Suleman, who left Ole Miss with her name all over the Rebel record book under Acklin’s tutelage. During that season, Suleman clocked the second-fastest indoor 200-meter time in school history at 23.65 at the SEC Championships, as well as the fourth-best 60-meter time of 7.38 also at the conference meet. Outdoors she was equally successful, running the second-best 100-meter time of 11.39 and the fourth-best 200-meter time at 23.26.
Acklin followed Ole Miss head coach Connie Price-Smith to Oxford after serving one year on her staff at his alma mater, Southern Illinois University.
In 2015, Acklin's young Saluki sprinters showed significant improvement from previous years. Freshman Mystique Thompson took SIU's record book by storm, clocking in the third-best 60-meter time (7.55), fifth-best indoor 200 (24.74), fourth-best 100 (11.66) and seventh-best outdoor 200 (24.11) in school history. Acklin was also able to get production out of 100 and 200-meter sprinter Tyrone Echols, All-MVC hurdler Remy Abrought, 400-meter All-Missouri Valley Conference honoree Nikolai Gall, 400-meter sophomore Jessica Jump and utility man Kemar Jones. In his lone season in Carbondale, Acklin sent three of his sprinters to the NCAA West Regional in Thompson, Gall and Abrought.
Acklin came back to Carbondale after two successful stints as an assistant coach at the NJCAA level at Iowa Central Community College (2009-14) and Rend Lake College (2006-09).
At Iowa Central, Acklin was part of seven NJCAA National Championship teams with the Tritons - one of the top junior college track programs in the country. While on staff, the Triton men won the indoor national title three times (2011, 2012, 2014) and the women won three indoor titles (2010, 2012, 2014) and one outdoor title (2013). With Iowa Central, Acklin was named the NJCAA Indoor Assistant Coach of the Year three times -- most recently in 2014 with the Triton women. In 2011 alone, Acklin coached three Triton male hurdlers who ran 13.90 seconds or faster in the 110-meter hurdles at the national meet outdoors, and among them they won both the 110 and 400 hurdle titles that year.
Acklin had similar success with Rend Lake in his three seasons in Ina, Ill. The Warriors swept both the men's and women's indoor NJCAA national titles in 2008 with Acklin on staff - the only two national titles in Rend Lake track history.
In eight years as an assistant coach at the junior college level, Acklin produced 97 All-Americans and 43 NJCAA National Champions.
Some of Acklin's most prominent pupils have gone on to compete for their own national teams. At Iowa Central, Acklin coached four national team members: Adriana Bradford (USA, 2010), Nathan Arnett (Bahamas, 2010-11), Teshon Adderley (Bahamas, 2012) and Reyare Thomas (Trinidad and Tobago, 2011-12). Bradford was a member of Team USA for the 2010 Thorp Cup; Arnett, an eventual DI transfer to Mississippi State, was the 2010 Bahamian 400-meter hurdle runner-up and NACAC team member; Adderley, who later transferred to Minnesota, was a member of the Bahamian CAC and World Junior Team; and Thomas, who eventually transferred to Abilene Christian, represented Trinidad and Tobago in the 2011 World Championships and the 2012 London Olympics.
Acklin's most famous pupil, though, is Olympic silver medalist Ryan Bailey. Acklin coached Bailey at Rend Lake, where Bailey won two individual NJCAA titles (indoor 55-meter dash, outdoor 100 meter dash). In the 2012 London Games, Bailey was the anchor on the American 4x100-meter relay with Tyson Gay, Justin Gatlin and Trell Kimmons that won silver and broke the all-time U.S. record in 37.04, finishing second to Usain Bolt's Jamaican team. Bailey was also a finalist in the 100, where he finished fifth.
Acklin is a 2006 SIU graduate with a bachelor's degree in liberal arts and was a three-time MVC Champion for the Salukis on the track from 2004-06, with 110-meter hurdle titles in 2005 and 2006 and a 4x100-meter relay crown in 2006. He still ranks high in the SIU record books in the 110-meter hurdles (13.68) and the indoor 60-meter hurdles (7.92). That 110-meter time finished as the sixth-best in the NCAA in 2006.
Before SIU, Acklin was a two-time NJCAA All-American at Wallace State Community College. He is a native of Glassboro, New Jersey, where he went to Triton Regional High School and was inducted into Triton's Athletic Hall of Fame in 2013. As of Feb. 2015, Acklin is a USATF Level III and IAAF Level V certified coach in sprints and hurdles, the highest possible certification.
| COACHING CAREER | ||
| Year(s) | School | Position |
| 2016-Pres. | Ole Miss | Assistant Coach / Sprints / Hurdles |
| 2015 | Southern Illinois | Assistant Coach / Sprints / Hurdles |
| 2009-14 | Iowa Central CC | Assistant Coach |
| 2006-08 | Rend Lake College | Assistant Coach |
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