From Scratch: Jocelyn Pringle’s Journey from Track & Field Convert to Conference Champion
March 25, 2025 | Track & Field
Jocelyn Pringle was supposed to be a college basketball player. Native of Jacksonville, Fla., she was committed to the University of Tampa. She had picked up track as a high school junior, but mostly it was not a particularly serious endeavor. Basketball was her main focus.
Going into the summer before her senior year, Pringle's main goal was to continue to improve on the hardwood and put in the final preparations for what would be her last high school season before going on to her long-awaited collegiate career. She did so while balancing throwing the shot put and her endeavors on the basketball court, having been cajoled into joining the track & field team, her 5-9 frame and evident athletic ability piquing the interest of her high school coaches. A naturally gifted competitor, hand-chosen to score some points in the throws circle, Pringle was happy to compete but never let her focus drift from the greater dreams she had for herself.
Then life happened. As the story has too often been written, things didn't go the way that Pringle imagined. During the summer of her senior year, she tore her ACL.
Offer to play at Tampa rescinded. College basketball dreams gone. Future as a collegiate athlete evaporated overnight.
So, she turned to rehab, and to school, not imagining that in her new, unwritten future, she would get to live out her past dreams. She was cleared to play the final few games of her final season of basketball, but there was no college coach waiting in the wings, no scholarship waiting to float down and sweep her off to return to the court at the next level.
After basketball season ended, Pringle rejoined the track & field team, and in her very first practice back, her coach recorded a short clip of her throwing the shot and uploaded it to Instagram.
Enter David Price. The longest-tenured coach on staff at East Carolina, Price was scrolling through his own Instagram feed and thanks to the new era of suggested posts, the clip of Pringle throwing came up. He saw something there.
"I was flipping through Instagram and I saw this girl who was shuffling through the ring—he technique was really off, but she was really explosive and super aggressive and it almost seemed like she was fearless," says Price. "She had a knee brace on and she was still explosive with it. Normally when you have a knee brace you don't go 100%, but she's got this knee brace and she's still super aggressive."
Now, Coach Price has an eye for throws talent. He's coached 18 All-Americans and 31 conference champions in his time at ECU. To say that he knows what he's looking for is an understatement, and to say that his seeing something in Pringle was the ultimate endorsement of her potential would be that much more.
From a simple Instagram story to a message to Pringle's high school coach requesting permission to talk to her, the recruiting journey had begun anew.
Now, it's worth mentioning that previous to Price reaching out, Pringle had never even heard of ECU. It was her dad who had to explain it was a Division I institution in North Carolina. But even still, going into her conversation with the man who would become her collegiate coach, Pringle didn't know much about the school which was newly interested in her services.
She had that conversation with Price anyway. Over an hour on the phone, talking about the school, the program, a little bit of everything and a potential official visit. The call went well, and Pringle was excited about the possibility, but she was still dubious of the whole thing.
"At the time, I didn't have the marks at all," she says. "I didn't know how to throw anything. I kind of was just going out for fun of it in high school and trying to score points at our 2A division school back at home."
But she trusted Price and his vision, and she wanted to be a part of the program. Then came the other catch: she just couldn't afford it. ECU didn't have enough money to make the endeavor affordable for Pringle as an out-of-state student. After a lot of prayer, she had to make a hard choice.
Pringle had to tell Price that she couldn't afford to come to ECU but said that if he would save her a spot, she'd take a year to work and save money. She planned to work out and continue to develop her skills so that she could be ready when her time came. It was a leap of faith, and one Price was more than willing to take with her.
"I told him, it's rough but I don't think I could come this year, but I'm planning on working and training, and if you send me the lift schedules, I'll do the lifting this year," Pringle explains. "And Coach Price goes, 'I will save you a spot going into the 2024 season. I really, really want you on my squad if it's this year, next year, ten years from now.'"
"When she came to visit, her family was super grounded, Jocelyn was super grounded and they were risk takers—I was asking her to take a risk to come here and pay a lot of money to do something she's never done before," echoes Price. "She had to take a year off to save money and that was fine with me, we'll take you whenever. She works like crazy, she works at Sup Dogs and her grades are great. I have mad respect for someone who works like that to better themselves."
That led to the young high school graduate doing what she promised: taking a year off, working full time, saving money and finding the time to continue working out in between. And it paid off, just a year delayed in the fall of 2023, Pringle came to Greenville to begin this new chapter.
She joined the team, officially fulfilling her dream of being a college athlete, but hers was never going to be a normal story. If she looks familiar to the average ECU student or fan, it's probably because, in addition to being a full-time student and a Division I athlete, Pringle works nearly full time at Sup Dogs.
It's a job fitting of her personality. Bubbly and joyful, it's unlikely Pringle has ever met a stranger. The role suits her, and it's an apt facsimile of the role she plays on the team as well. She's the ultimate teammate—there may not have been anyone happier than Pringle when her teammate, Lydia Simmons scored points for the Pirates in the weight throw in this most recent American Athletic Conference Indoor Championships after improving her marks in every single meet this season. That alone is a story worth telling.
But it was Pringle who stood atop the podium at that meet. Conference Champion in the women's weight throw for 2025. She was the class of the field all year. One might think then that the journey from coming to Greenville to that Friday in Birmingham was linear, but it surely was not.
Remember, Pringle was recruited for her shot put abilities. She competed in the event as a freshman, but it was not her true calling. Price quickly identified that she was better suited for the weight throws indoors and the hammer throw outdoors.
She did pick up those implements last year, and she competed in the weight throw indoors, but she was raw. Her technique wasn't there, and she didn't have experience competing at that level.
Pringle finished 19th in the weight throw at the 2024 American Indoor Championships—dead last. It was just not her day. She wasn't ready for it.
"I was like, this is not real, I suck at this sport. I was telling myself that I never wanted to do it again," she says. "But then Coach Price walked up to me and put his arm around me, and he looked at me and he said, 'Get out of your head. This is going to be one hell of a comeback story.'"
Pringle came back to practice with a different mindset entering the outdoor season. Instead of being the half-hearted athlete looking for ways to get out of doing hard things, she lived at the track. It turned into Price telling her it was time to go home. In every phase of her work, she ratcheted up her level of intensity.
And it began to pay off early. During the outdoor season, she started to click off some good marks in the hammer, culminating in the 2024 American Outdoor Championships where she managed to score points for her team. She finished seventh in the meet with a mark of better than 53 meters.
It was all the momentum she needed, and she decided to keep it rolling. Staying in Greenville during the summer, Pringle kept her nose to the grindstone and drove towards her ultimate goals. It was a great challenge, but one she was pleased to take on.
"My parents understood it, which is really nice, but some of my friends were like, 'Dude, are we ever going to see you again?'" she says with a smile. "I was like, no, y'all I'm chasing my dreams. I want to be here. This is what's going to get me where I want to be."
Pringle didn't have to wait long for all of that hard work to pay off. In her first competition of the year at the Clemson Invitational, she made a splash. Her toss of 19.83m was the fourth-best mark in East Carolina history. It was also enough for Pringle's first career win. This, after not finishing better than 11th in any meet during the 2024 indoor season.
It was a revelation, and it was not an aberration. Throws of 19.56m and 19.75m earned her third place and another victory in her next two meets back at Clemson then at South Carolina.
Then, in the final regular season meet of the year, Pringle took a shot across the bow that put the entire conference on notice. She had been the one to beat all season, but it was close. She was the favorite to win the American Athletic Conference title, but she wasn't expecting to run away with it. Her toss of 20.36m at the D1 Pre-National meet changed that. Not only did it make her just the fourth ECU athlete ever to break the 20-meter barrier, it gave her a gap to the field. She was now the prohibitive favorite to win the conference championship.
That presented a different challenge. Once the track & field convert, hunting the vast field of competitors who had been doing it for years; Pringle was now the hunted.
"Obviously, I'm going to feel the pressure going into conference," she says. "And in my head, you know, you have your doubts. Like, 'What if I just don't throw it as well or whatever?' But then I just kept telling myself, 'You threw 19 [meters] how many times this season? Then you whipped out a 20 [meter throw]. With just you, you can do it."
She also journaled more this season. She took time to herself to focus on her breathing, to pray, to keep her mind calm. She did everything in her power to remain mentally prepared for the moment she stepped into the ring so that when she did, all else would come naturally.
Then she tossed a warmup throw over 19 meters.
"When I got up into that ring for my warmup throw, it went 19-something. I was like, it's over for everybody today. And I kept telling myself, it's going to be a fight for second," she says.
It was the confidence of an athlete who knew the work she had put in, and she was right. Her first throw of the day would have won it, it was clear of 19 meters on a day in which only two competitors would hit the mark. Her second throw slammed the door shut.
19.61m on just her second attempt of the competition gave her what wound up being a victory of over half a meter. Taking the ring last during the finals, she got to set up for one last attempt with her championship in hand.
A championship in hand and her team at her side, she explains, "Everyone on the ECU team was in the stands on the other side. So, when I walked in, all I could see was ECU. And they were hyped. They were banging the bleachers. They were yelling. Because I just won. Everyone was hyped… I was like, 'Y'all, this is so cool.'"
So cool, it was. From last to first, and with so much more to come. Not bad for a basketball player.
Going into the summer before her senior year, Pringle's main goal was to continue to improve on the hardwood and put in the final preparations for what would be her last high school season before going on to her long-awaited collegiate career. She did so while balancing throwing the shot put and her endeavors on the basketball court, having been cajoled into joining the track & field team, her 5-9 frame and evident athletic ability piquing the interest of her high school coaches. A naturally gifted competitor, hand-chosen to score some points in the throws circle, Pringle was happy to compete but never let her focus drift from the greater dreams she had for herself.
Then life happened. As the story has too often been written, things didn't go the way that Pringle imagined. During the summer of her senior year, she tore her ACL.
Offer to play at Tampa rescinded. College basketball dreams gone. Future as a collegiate athlete evaporated overnight.
So, she turned to rehab, and to school, not imagining that in her new, unwritten future, she would get to live out her past dreams. She was cleared to play the final few games of her final season of basketball, but there was no college coach waiting in the wings, no scholarship waiting to float down and sweep her off to return to the court at the next level.
After basketball season ended, Pringle rejoined the track & field team, and in her very first practice back, her coach recorded a short clip of her throwing the shot and uploaded it to Instagram.
Enter David Price. The longest-tenured coach on staff at East Carolina, Price was scrolling through his own Instagram feed and thanks to the new era of suggested posts, the clip of Pringle throwing came up. He saw something there.
"I was flipping through Instagram and I saw this girl who was shuffling through the ring—he technique was really off, but she was really explosive and super aggressive and it almost seemed like she was fearless," says Price. "She had a knee brace on and she was still explosive with it. Normally when you have a knee brace you don't go 100%, but she's got this knee brace and she's still super aggressive."
Now, Coach Price has an eye for throws talent. He's coached 18 All-Americans and 31 conference champions in his time at ECU. To say that he knows what he's looking for is an understatement, and to say that his seeing something in Pringle was the ultimate endorsement of her potential would be that much more.
From a simple Instagram story to a message to Pringle's high school coach requesting permission to talk to her, the recruiting journey had begun anew.
Now, it's worth mentioning that previous to Price reaching out, Pringle had never even heard of ECU. It was her dad who had to explain it was a Division I institution in North Carolina. But even still, going into her conversation with the man who would become her collegiate coach, Pringle didn't know much about the school which was newly interested in her services.
She had that conversation with Price anyway. Over an hour on the phone, talking about the school, the program, a little bit of everything and a potential official visit. The call went well, and Pringle was excited about the possibility, but she was still dubious of the whole thing.
"At the time, I didn't have the marks at all," she says. "I didn't know how to throw anything. I kind of was just going out for fun of it in high school and trying to score points at our 2A division school back at home."
But she trusted Price and his vision, and she wanted to be a part of the program. Then came the other catch: she just couldn't afford it. ECU didn't have enough money to make the endeavor affordable for Pringle as an out-of-state student. After a lot of prayer, she had to make a hard choice.
Pringle had to tell Price that she couldn't afford to come to ECU but said that if he would save her a spot, she'd take a year to work and save money. She planned to work out and continue to develop her skills so that she could be ready when her time came. It was a leap of faith, and one Price was more than willing to take with her.
"I told him, it's rough but I don't think I could come this year, but I'm planning on working and training, and if you send me the lift schedules, I'll do the lifting this year," Pringle explains. "And Coach Price goes, 'I will save you a spot going into the 2024 season. I really, really want you on my squad if it's this year, next year, ten years from now.'"
"When she came to visit, her family was super grounded, Jocelyn was super grounded and they were risk takers—I was asking her to take a risk to come here and pay a lot of money to do something she's never done before," echoes Price. "She had to take a year off to save money and that was fine with me, we'll take you whenever. She works like crazy, she works at Sup Dogs and her grades are great. I have mad respect for someone who works like that to better themselves."
That led to the young high school graduate doing what she promised: taking a year off, working full time, saving money and finding the time to continue working out in between. And it paid off, just a year delayed in the fall of 2023, Pringle came to Greenville to begin this new chapter.
She joined the team, officially fulfilling her dream of being a college athlete, but hers was never going to be a normal story. If she looks familiar to the average ECU student or fan, it's probably because, in addition to being a full-time student and a Division I athlete, Pringle works nearly full time at Sup Dogs.
It's a job fitting of her personality. Bubbly and joyful, it's unlikely Pringle has ever met a stranger. The role suits her, and it's an apt facsimile of the role she plays on the team as well. She's the ultimate teammate—there may not have been anyone happier than Pringle when her teammate, Lydia Simmons scored points for the Pirates in the weight throw in this most recent American Athletic Conference Indoor Championships after improving her marks in every single meet this season. That alone is a story worth telling.
But it was Pringle who stood atop the podium at that meet. Conference Champion in the women's weight throw for 2025. She was the class of the field all year. One might think then that the journey from coming to Greenville to that Friday in Birmingham was linear, but it surely was not.
Remember, Pringle was recruited for her shot put abilities. She competed in the event as a freshman, but it was not her true calling. Price quickly identified that she was better suited for the weight throws indoors and the hammer throw outdoors.
She did pick up those implements last year, and she competed in the weight throw indoors, but she was raw. Her technique wasn't there, and she didn't have experience competing at that level.
Pringle finished 19th in the weight throw at the 2024 American Indoor Championships—dead last. It was just not her day. She wasn't ready for it.
"I was like, this is not real, I suck at this sport. I was telling myself that I never wanted to do it again," she says. "But then Coach Price walked up to me and put his arm around me, and he looked at me and he said, 'Get out of your head. This is going to be one hell of a comeback story.'"
Pringle came back to practice with a different mindset entering the outdoor season. Instead of being the half-hearted athlete looking for ways to get out of doing hard things, she lived at the track. It turned into Price telling her it was time to go home. In every phase of her work, she ratcheted up her level of intensity.
And it began to pay off early. During the outdoor season, she started to click off some good marks in the hammer, culminating in the 2024 American Outdoor Championships where she managed to score points for her team. She finished seventh in the meet with a mark of better than 53 meters.
It was all the momentum she needed, and she decided to keep it rolling. Staying in Greenville during the summer, Pringle kept her nose to the grindstone and drove towards her ultimate goals. It was a great challenge, but one she was pleased to take on.
"My parents understood it, which is really nice, but some of my friends were like, 'Dude, are we ever going to see you again?'" she says with a smile. "I was like, no, y'all I'm chasing my dreams. I want to be here. This is what's going to get me where I want to be."
Pringle didn't have to wait long for all of that hard work to pay off. In her first competition of the year at the Clemson Invitational, she made a splash. Her toss of 19.83m was the fourth-best mark in East Carolina history. It was also enough for Pringle's first career win. This, after not finishing better than 11th in any meet during the 2024 indoor season.
It was a revelation, and it was not an aberration. Throws of 19.56m and 19.75m earned her third place and another victory in her next two meets back at Clemson then at South Carolina.
Then, in the final regular season meet of the year, Pringle took a shot across the bow that put the entire conference on notice. She had been the one to beat all season, but it was close. She was the favorite to win the American Athletic Conference title, but she wasn't expecting to run away with it. Her toss of 20.36m at the D1 Pre-National meet changed that. Not only did it make her just the fourth ECU athlete ever to break the 20-meter barrier, it gave her a gap to the field. She was now the prohibitive favorite to win the conference championship.
That presented a different challenge. Once the track & field convert, hunting the vast field of competitors who had been doing it for years; Pringle was now the hunted.
"Obviously, I'm going to feel the pressure going into conference," she says. "And in my head, you know, you have your doubts. Like, 'What if I just don't throw it as well or whatever?' But then I just kept telling myself, 'You threw 19 [meters] how many times this season? Then you whipped out a 20 [meter throw]. With just you, you can do it."
She also journaled more this season. She took time to herself to focus on her breathing, to pray, to keep her mind calm. She did everything in her power to remain mentally prepared for the moment she stepped into the ring so that when she did, all else would come naturally.
Then she tossed a warmup throw over 19 meters.
"When I got up into that ring for my warmup throw, it went 19-something. I was like, it's over for everybody today. And I kept telling myself, it's going to be a fight for second," she says.
It was the confidence of an athlete who knew the work she had put in, and she was right. Her first throw of the day would have won it, it was clear of 19 meters on a day in which only two competitors would hit the mark. Her second throw slammed the door shut.
19.61m on just her second attempt of the competition gave her what wound up being a victory of over half a meter. Taking the ring last during the finals, she got to set up for one last attempt with her championship in hand.
A championship in hand and her team at her side, she explains, "Everyone on the ECU team was in the stands on the other side. So, when I walked in, all I could see was ECU. And they were hyped. They were banging the bleachers. They were yelling. Because I just won. Everyone was hyped… I was like, 'Y'all, this is so cool.'"
So cool, it was. From last to first, and with so much more to come. Not bad for a basketball player.
Players Mentioned
Throws
/ Track & Field
Throws
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