Admin (Garrett Zatlin)
Dec 4, 20202 min
Yesterday, Notre Dame announced that both Lauren Bailey (Indianapolis) and Anthony Russo (Penn) will be finishing their eligibility with the Fighting Irish as graduate transfers starting next fall. Both Bailey and Russo are expected to have all three seasons of eligibility remaining.
Bailey has been one the NCAA's most elite D2 distance talents over the past few seasons. The U. Indy star owns personal bests of 9:28 (3k) and 16:17 (5k) which she ran last winter. She also finished 9th at the D2 NCAA XC Championships last fall and was ranked at TSR #2 in our "If Everything Was Normal" preseason cross country individual rankings earlier this year.
Bailey recently ended the altered 2020 cross country season undefeated and was named TSR's "Most Valuable Runner" in Division Two this past fall.
The U. Indy ace will provide a major scoring boost to a talented Notre Dame women's team that is truthfully better than what their performance at the ACC Championships from this past fall suggests. The soon-to-be Fighting Irish runner will bring veteran experience to a varsity group that is still relatively young.
On the men's side, Anthony Russo will be joining Notre Dame after finishing his time at Penn. Russo will soon reunite with former Penn teammates Colin Daly and Will Daly who moved to South Bend this past offseason as graduate transfers.
Russo has been one of the more talented distance runners in the Ivy League, emerging as a top cross country scorer during the 2019 season. The Penn front-runner is a two-time individual national qualifier who has also finished in the top-10 of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Championships twice in his career.
During the 2019 cross country season, Russo finished runner-up at the Ivy League XC Championships, leading the Quakers to the conference title. He went on to finish 89th at the NCAA Championships.
Russo owns modest, but respectable personal bests of 8:20 (3k) and 14:21 (5k) on the track, but is clearly more of a longer distance specialist with a 10k personal best of 29:44.
Notre Dame is expected to lose only one veteran (Kevin Salvano) from their varsity lineup heading into the 2021 cross country season. By adding Russo to next year's roster, the Fighting Irish will be able to fill a key gap in their top seven and add a consistent, veteran presence to a team that will continue to have podium aspirations heading into next year.