Anna Bearss enters her second season at Drake as the associate head cross country coach and assistant track & field coach for distance in August of 2023, where she is responsible for coaching the women’s distance and middle-distance athletes.
During her first year with the Bulldogs, Bearss made an instant impact guiding the women to a 3rd place team finish in the Missouri Valley Conference, the highest finish for a Drake women’s team since 2000. This effort was led by Brooke Mullins and Tyla Lumley who earned All-MVC Honors. The women’s team also notched its highest finish in program history at the NCAA Midwest Regional Championships during the fall 2023 season.
Mullins built on cross country success with Bearss as her coach on the track, setting new school records in the indoor mile (4:46.01) and the 3000m steeplechase during the outdoor season (10:08.10). Mullins was the Drake Relays Champion, MVC Outdoor Champion, and an NCAA West Preliminary Round qualifier in the steeplechase event, all during the 2023 outdoor season.
Bearss arrived in Des Moines from the University of Akron, where she was the head women’s cross country coach and assistant track & field coach for the 2021-22 cross country and track seasons. This stop was met with success as the Lady Zips finished third at the Mid-American Conference championships in cross country, the highest team finish in over a decade. The women’s track team at Akron won both the indoor and outdoor team MAC championship titles during the 2022 seasons, with Bearss’ athletes making key contributions. During the indoor track season the school record for the women’s DMR was broken, and event MAC titles were won by Bearss’ men’s DMR team, and by Blake Lucius in the men’s 800m, who went on to run 1:48.69 for that distance later in the spring of 2022. A standout for the women’s program during the outdoor season was 6th year senior Alyssa Thomas who dropped 43 seconds off of her personal best from previous years to run 16:28.99 for 5000m, just .09 away from the school record at Akron.
Bearss joined the staff at Akron after she spent three years (2018-21) at South Dakota State University, where she coached the women’s distance and middle-distance athletes. With Bearss’ tutelage, South Dakota State won the 2020-21 Summit League Cross Country Championship, marking the school’s first women’s title since 2008. On the track, the women in the program set school records across six different events ranging from the 800m to the 10,000m. During the 2021 outdoor season alone, individual Bearss’ athletes claimed Summit League titles in the 800m, 5000m and 10000m. Breakout performers include Leah Hansen who ran 34:03.03 on the Blue Oval for 10,000m enroute to winning the Drake Relays title in 2021, as well as Iowa Native Ellie Friesen who ran 4:18.51 for 1500m in 2021. Both women were NCAA West Preliminary Round qualifiers in their respective events.
Before South Dakota State, Bearss was a volunteer assistant coach at MVC opponent Indiana State University from January 2017 to May 2018 while working with long sprint and distance athletes. As a student-athlete, Bearss spent one year with the Tulsa cross country and track programs in 2014-15. She boosted the Golden Hurricane to the 2014 American Athletic Conference title and garnered all-conference accolades by finishing 12th overall.
A native of Rochester, Ind., Bearss earned her bachelor’s degree in political science from Indiana State in 2018 and her master’s in sociology from South Dakota State in 2021.
