The Byrne family resides in Coronado, CA.
Brigid Byrne will toe the starting line of the cross country course at the U.S. Naval Academy Golf Club for the final time next month.
Byrne, the captain of the 2012 Navy cross country team, will run against Army on October 13th in her last home meet and the 27th edition of the Army-Navy dual.
The first Army-Navy women’s cross country Star Meet was held in 1986. A senior named Amy Donovan toed that same starting line on the golf course that Byrne would stand at so many years later.
Athletes who compete in the same sports in different eras at the Naval Academy share a special bond, as do all midshipmen dating back to 1845. But Brigid Byrne and the former Amy Donovan have more in common than just donning the same Navy cross country singlet.
They have the distinguished honor of being the first mother-daughter letterwinner pair in the history of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Byrne will not be the first female midshipman to graduate whose mother also graduated from the academy (she’ll actually be the sixth), but no mother-daughter pair before featured two varsity letterwinners.
Amy entered the academy in 1983, in just the eighth incoming class with women, and was a four-year letterwinner on the cross country team. Her daughter, Brigid, enrolled in 2009 and has lettered multiple times in cross country and track and field.
“It speaks volumes about the Naval Academy and the product it puts out,” head cross country coach Karen Boyle said of mother-daughter legacies. “It shows exactly what this institution can mean to a mother if she believes this is also the best place for her daughter.”
Brigid’s father, a Class of 1987 graduate, was also a letterwinner at the Naval Academy, which again leaves her in rare company of being the child of two midshipmen student-athletes.
Read the entire Navy Sports article here.
