Former Ole Miss slugger Abbey Latham begins her fourth season an assistant coach with the UNCW Softball program in 2026.
Latham developed the 2024 CAA Championship offense that included three players above .300, highlighted by Skylar Stockton's breakout campaign. The All-CAA First-Teamer set career-highs across the board to lead UNCW. Elsewhere, Tayler Vitola and Cassidy Relay were among the top table-setting duos in the country with both averaging better than .320 with at least 17 steals.
In her first season, Latham oversaw four players finish the season with a .300 or better average, including Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Year Janel Gamache's team-high .364 mark to go with four home runs and 28 RBI. Gamache, who also earned All-CAA First-Team honors, was joined on the circuit's top team by outfielder Arial Pearce while junior second baseman Tayler Vitola ascended to All-Conference status for the first time in her career with a Second-Team nod.
UNCW notched 74 multi-hit games, led by Vitola's 16, in 2023 while 11 Seahawks combined for 37 multi-RBI efforts under Latham.
The Seahawks opened CAA play with a sweep of Towson in which it exploded for 32 hits over three games, the second-highest total in a three-game CAA series since joining the league in 2004.
Latham joined the defending Colonial Athletic Association champions after helping the Rebels make four NCAA Regional appearances as well as one Super Regional appearance from 2018-22.
As a player, Latham appeared in 237 games and made 212 starts for Ole Miss, batting .298 with 39 home runs with a Rebels career-record 167 RBI. She is tied for fourth in program history with 196 hits and holds a share of third all-time with 40 doubles.
With Latham in the heart of the order, the Rebels went 41-19 in 2022 and earned a trip to the Los Angeles Regional hosted by UCLA. The utility player led Ole Miss with 10 homers and 46 RBI while hitting .292 in her final season.
The Livingston, Ala., native, reset Ole Miss's single-season RBI record (54) as a sophomore. She paced the Rebels in home runs (10), doubles (13), slugging percentage (.559), and walks (22) as Ole Miss went 42-20 in 2019 and won the Oxford Regional to earn the school's second Super Regional.
Latham made an immediate impact for the Rebels when she arrived in 2018, smashing seven round-trippers in only 69 at-bats. She posted a .455 batting average in the NCAA Tempe Regional, with three homers, a pair of doubles, five RBI and three runs.
Latham broke into the coaching ranks in August 2022 as coach of the Bombers 08 Gold squad, an Elite Travel Fastpitch Softball team based in Atlanta, Ga.
