Coach Jessica Russo took over as Lesley University's Women's Tennis Head Coach in 2021 after serving as an Assistant Coach for two seasons.

 

In just her second season as a collegiate head coach, Russo was named the 2022 Great Northeast Athletic Conference (GNAC) Women's Tennis Coach of the Year after guiding the squad to a 9-6 overall record, a 1000% win improvement from her first season at the helm.

 

At Lesley, she has recruited and coached one GNAC First Team All-Conference player who was also named to the GNAC All-Rookie Team (Jessica Legendre, 2022).

 

Russo is no stranger to Lesley having played for the Lynx for three seasons after transferring in from Newbury College. During her rookie campaign with the Nighthawks she eanred NECC Rookie of the Week honors. She was named to the NECC Academic All-Conference Team in 2016 and 2017, the NAC Academic All-Conference Team in 2018 and the GNAC Academic All-Conference Team in 2019. She was a recipient of the Coach's Award in 2018 and was a member of the 2019 Women's Tennis team that earned the Lesley Athletics Academic Cup, presented to the team with the highest cumulative GPA. She posted 14 singles wins and 16 doubles wins over her three seasons on the team and served as a team captain her senior campaign.

 

Outside of coaching at the collegiate level, Russo serves as the Tennis Program Director for the town of Watertown, Mass. as well as a Coach at the Waltham Tennis Club in Waltham, Mass. She also is the Tennis Director for ACEing Autism out of Wayland, Mass.

 

Before coaching at Lesley, Russo was on the coaching staff at Saugus High School for one season.

 

Russo graduated from Lesley in 2019 with a BS in Psychology, earning Dean's List and Cum Laude latin honors. She went on to attend Endicott College for graduate school, obtaining a Masters in Education with a focus Applied Behavior Analysis in 2023, also earning Dean's List honors.

 

CAREER RECORD

YEAR	SCHOOL	OVERALL	CONFERENCE	WIN %	NOTES
2021	Lesley	0-11	0-6 (GNAC)	.000 / .000
2022	Lesley	10-7	3-3 (GNAC)	.588 / .500	GNAC Semifinals
	TOTALS	10-17	3-9 (GNAC)	.370 /.250