Anthony Williams

Anthony Williams

Anthony Williams is the longest-tenured member of the current Villanova track & field coaching staff. He is in his 31st season with the Wildcats in 2024-25 and begins his 22nd year as the associate head coach of both the men’s and women’s track & field programs. Williams specifically coaches the Villanova sprinters, hurdlers and jumpers. He is the meet director for all Villanova home meets and for many years has directed the various camps and clinics that the Wildcats host throughout the season.
 
In more than three decades on campus, Williams has been instrumental in helping Villanova maintain its place of national prominence in track & field. He works with both the men’s and women’s student-athletes and, during his tenure, has helped the Wildcats tally seven top 10 team finishes at the NCAA Championships. Villanova has scored team points at the indoor NCAA Championships 44 times during Williams’ career (24 women, 20 men) as well as 37 times outdoors (19 women, 18 men). At the BIG EAST level, Williams has helped the Wildcats win 24 team titles at the conference championships indoors and outdoors (15 women’s conference titles, nine men’s titles).
 
On an individual level, Williams’ student-athletes have garnered 58 All-America honors and won 105 individual events at the BIG EAST Championships to go along with another 41 conference relay titles. Villanova’s performance in the sprints, hurdles and jumps stood out in particular during the 2023-24 indoor and outdoor seasons. At the 2024 indoor conference championships, Williams’ group scored 49.5 women’s points and 39.5 men’s points. The point totals were even higher at the outdoor BIG EAST meet which the Wildcats hosted. Williams’ athletes scored 66.5 women’s points and 45 men’s points at the meet.
 
In recent seasons, Williams has mentored women’s high jumpers Sanaä Barnes and Roschell Clayton who have completely rewritten the Villanova record book in their signature event. The pair has combined for eight All-America honors in the high jump and they each have tallied multiple top-eight NCAA finishes. Barnes and Clayton combine to hold each of the 21 best marks in school history in the high jump. Clayton is the current school record holder at 1.88 meters set on two occasions in 2024; Barnes held the previous mark of 1.87 meters set at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials in 2021.
 
Williams also guided triple jumper Malik Cunningham to All-America finishes at both the indoor and outdoor NCAA Championships. He was a first team All-American at the 2023 outdoor championships with a seventh place finish and is one of only three athletes in school history to surpass 16 meters in the triple jump. Two of those three triple jumpers to surpass 16 meters are Cunningham and Jermaine Deans, a three-time BIG EAST champion under Williams’ tutelage. Cunningham and Deans are both products of the same Jamaican high school program that Williams himself came out of during his own athletic career.
 
One of the Villanova stars of the 2023-24 seasons was sprinter and hurdler Jane Livingston, who was the women’s individual high point scorer at the BIG EAST Championships both indoors and outdoors. She swept the BIG EAST titles indoors in the 60 meters and the 60 meter hurdles, then did the same outdoors in the 100 meters and the 100 meter hurdles. Livingston is only the second athlete in more than 40 years of BIG EAST history to win all four of those events in the same year.
 
Livingston followed in the footsteps of sprinter Trudy-Ann Williamson, who was the Co-Outstanding Track Performer and tied for the women’s highest point scorer at the 2019 indoor BIG EAST Championships where she was a double winner in the 60 meters and the 200 meters. Williams set school records in the 60 meters and the 100 meters during her collegiate career and still holds each of the 10 fastest times in the 60 meters in the Wildcats record book as of the end of the 2024 campaign.
 
Villanova has had consistent success on a national level in each of the disciplines that Williams coaches. He helped men’s sprinter Samuel Ellison develop into a seven-time All-American and a two-time BIG EAST 800 meter champion. Ellison tallied first team All-America finishes in the 800 meters both indoors (sixth, 2014) and outdoors (eighth, 2012) during his collegiate career, then went on to continue his career professionally after he earned a prestigious Fulbright scholarship which he used to study at the University of Birmingham in England.
 
At the 2014 outdoor NCAA Championships, Willams coached a pair of All-Americans in Ellison and long jumper Elbert Maxwell who made his debut at the national meet in a year that saw him sweep the BIG EAST indoor and outdoor titles in the long jump.
 
In women’s track & field, the 60 meter hurdles and 100 meter hurdles have been among the top events for Villanova throughout Williams’ coaching career. He has coached 10 BIG EAST champions in each of those events, while on the men’s side Williams has mentored a combined 25 conference champions in the 400 meters and the 400 meter hurdles. His student-athletes have produced more BIG EAST gold medals (13) in the 400 meter hurdles than in any other event. The list of champions includes Kareem Archer (1996-98) and Drew Eckman (2004-06) who each won the event in three consecutive seasons during their careers.
 
Williams came to Villanova in 1994-95 and quickly achieved national success in his early years on the coaching staff. Archer was a four-time All-American and a six-time BIG EAST champion for the Wildcats whose top NCAA finishes were third place results in the 400 meter hurdles in both 1997 and 1998. His success helped pave the way for Nic O’Brien to follow in his footsteps, and O’Brien became a two-time All-American in the 400 meter hurdles in 2002 and 2003.
 
On the women’s side, Charmaine Walker was a three-time All-American indoors, beginning with a seventh place finish in the 55 meter hurdles in 1998. She went on to place sixth in the 60 meter hurdles at the NCAA Championships in each of the next two seasons. Walker was also a six-time BIG EAST champion, winning three conference titles in the hurdles both indoors and outdoors. She and Archer have each been inducted into the Villanova University Varsity Club Hall of Fame.
 
In the early 2000’s, sprinters Mike Brown and O’Brien were each national champions as part of the Villanova lineup in the distance medley relay which won consecutive NCAA titles in 2002 and 2003. Brown was a BIG EAST champion in the 400 meters indoors and the 400 meter hurdles outdoors to go along with winning an individual Penn Relays title in the 400 meter hurdles in 2000. Carlos Bedoya was a three-time BIG EAST champion in the 200 meters, winning the indoor title twice (2002, 2004) and the outdoor title once (2003).
 
From 2005-07, Monique Morgan was a two-time All-American and a three-time BIG EAST champion in the hurdles. She finished in eighth place indoors in the 60 meter hurdles in 2007 as well as outdoors in the 100 meter hurdles one year earlier. Morgan went on to have an extremely successful professional career and won the Jamaican national title in the 100 meter hurdles in 2014. That victory qualified her for the Jamaican team which represented the country later that summer at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland. Morgan had previously been a gold medalist at the Central American and Caribbean senior track & field championships in 2013.
 
Two of the most prominent Villanova men’s sprinters during Williams’ coaching tenure are Elvis Lewis and Drew Eckman, teammates during their time as Wildcats who combined to win 13 BIG EAST titles. Lewis was the BIG EAST indoor 400 meters champion for three straight years from 2007-09 and also won the event three times outdoors in 2006, 2007 and 2009. Eckman was the indoor BIG EAST champion in the 500 meters in 2006 to go along with his three outdoor titles in the 400 meter hurdles. Lewis and Eckman were a part of gold medal winning 4x400 meter relays at the BIG EAST Championships both indoors and outdoors in 2006.
 
More recently, Willams coached Shericka Ward to three All-America finishes in the hurdles in 2011 and 2012. She came in seventh in the 60 meter hurdles at the indoor NCAA Championships in 2012 to claim first team All-America honors, while she twice earned second team honors in the 100 meter hurdles outdoors. Ward set school records in the 200 meters both indoors and outdoors during her Villanova career. The absolute and outdoor mark of 23.30 set on May 7, 2011 at the BIG EAST Championships still stands as the Wildcats mark to beat.
 
The success of Williams’ student-athletes in collegiate competition has been a springboard to their continued success internationally. His athletes have represented the national teams of the United States, Jamaica, Barbados and Ecuador among others. In recent seasons Ellison and Barnes have competed at the U.S. Olympic Team Trials, and Clayton made her debut at the Jamaica National Senior Championships in 2024.
 
A native of Kingston, Jamaica, Williams competed collegiately at Blinn College (Texas) and Ole Miss. He was the captain of two national championship teams at Blinn College and earned junior college All-America accolades in the sprint events as well as the triple jump. At Ole Miss, Williams earned All-SEC honors and was named to the Dean’s List for his academic success.
 
Williams earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Ole Miss with a major in management in 1990. Following his graduation, he continued to excel in competition at the international level. He was the Jamaican national champion in the triple jump and went on to be a part of several Jamaican national teams.
 
Prior to his arrival at Villanova, Williams began his coaching career at Plainfield (N.J.) High School where he was a volunteer coach for the school’s jumpers.