An Appreciation of a Coaching Pioneer
By Pete Pelegrin (Assistant Sports Information Director --- FIUSports.com)
The esteemed FIU coaching career of Cindy Russo began in part because of a television show. Back in her grade school days in Portsmouth, Virginia, Russo thought about her future of moving to Florida and teaching. And one reason Russo dreamed of moving to Florida had to do with a famous dolphin.
"I was sitting in the classroom in sixth grade and I dreamt of coming to Florida and being a teacher," Russo said. "The TV show "Flipper" had a lot to do with it. I really always was intrigued by living in Florida and the warm weather. I fell in love with Flipper, the water and the sun."
Before moving down south to FIU, Russo embarked on a college basketball playing career at Old Dominion where for the first of two instances in Russo's basketball career she would be a trailblazer. At Old Dominion, Russo became one of the first female student-athletes in the nation to receive a scholarship. The NCAA did not grant scholarships to female student-athletes before Russo's playing career. After her playing days Russo accepted an assistant coaching position at ODU and coached the Lady Monarchs for two years.
In the 1977-78 season Russo was hired as FIU women's basketball head coach but at that time the head coaching job was not a full-time position. Still, Russo persevered in improving herself. Besides coaching FIU basketball at the time, Russo attended classes for her master's in physical education at FIU and was a part-time cashier at Winn-Dixie in Kendall.
"[Former ODU athletic director] Jim Jarrett had a big influence on me," Russo said. "He suggested I get my master's so that I could get a head job. FIU wasn't a full-time job so I left to Lamar for two years, where they played some excellent basketball. It was great but I didn't care for Texas that much. So when FIU became a full-time job they called me back to see if I was interested."
Wanting to come back to Florida, Russo returned to FIU where she flourished. One big reason Russo thrived at FIU was because of her idea to recruit Eastern Europe at a time when no other college basketball programs were active in that part of the world. Russo says she got the idea of recruiting Eastern Europe after watching the 1976 Olympics.
"I remember watching the 1976 Olympics and saw these eastern Europeans playing such fundamentally sound basketball," Russo said. "Back in the U.S. I would get outrecruited for American players by bigger schools so I came up with the idea to recruit Eastern Europe. The Europeans saw we were located in Miami and they immediately wanted to come play here. It was funny because you would go to their tournaments and eastern European kids in the stands had our t-shirts on."
With her long-time and trusted associate head coach Inge Nissen, who speaks six different languages, Russo traversed Eastern Europe and attended the junior national championships.
"We sat there all week and saw Spain, Bulgaria, Turkey, Poland play some really good basketball," Russo said. "Other U.S. schools saw what we were doing and started recruiting there. All kinds of big schools went to scout Eastern Europe. I wanted to be the best of the best. Miami was a good fit for the international kids."
Such a good fit that they helped Russo guide FIU to 22-consecutive winning seasons and 18 seasons with 20 wins or more. Russo took FIU to six NCAA Division I Tournament berths, seven Postseason Women's National Invitation Tournaments (WNIT), three NCAA Division II Tournaments and three AIAW Small College National Tournaments.
Russo won eight regular season conference titles and seven tournament championships. For her efforts Russo won conference coach of the year seven times in three different leagues and coached seven All-Americans. Russo finished her career with the 15th-most wins in Division I women's basketball history and with a career record of 707-391 (.647) over 39 seasons, and a record of 667-371 (.643) in 36 seasons at FIU.
Now Russo will take some time off and recover from her bout with the flu. But you won't see her sit still for too long.
"I need to get well and rest for a while," Russo said. "Get myself healthy and follow my instinct and something will come up. I needed to call it a day for coaching. You won't see someone coach for 40 years anymore. It's very stressful and it's hard on anyone. What I'm most proud of is our academic success throughout the years. We had many kids that made straight A's. FIU was very good for me and there's a lot love and we grew up together. I would do it again."