Dylan Faison Joins Brother Jordan in Historic Two-Sport Journey

Notre Dame opponents will soon see double.

Dylan Faison signed his National Letter of Intent to play football and lacrosse at Notre Dame on Wednesday, officially reuniting with his older brother, Jordan, a junior star on both Fighting Irish teams. 

The consensus No. 1 recruit in the Class of 2026 graduated early from Saint Andrew’s School in Florida so he could enroll at Notre Dame in time to be eligible to play both sports this spring.

The younger Faison hopes to make an immediate impact with Kevin Corrigan’s lacrosse squad that went 9-5 and reached the NCAA tournament quarterfinals last year.

“Whatever Coach tries to set up, I’m interested,” he said. “I can’t wait to get up there and see how he tries to work with it. It’ll be very interesting. But whatever Coach says, we’ll try to get that done.”

Faison verbally committed to Notre Dame in March 2024. Getting an early jump on his college career made the most sense. “It’s just time to go,” he said.

The Faison brothers, both wide receivers in football and midfielders in lacrosse, could be back on the field together this spring for the first time since Jordan was a senior and Dylan a freshman at Pine Crest High School.

“They had this unspoken chemistry,” Pine Crest coach George Harris said. “You could tell from playing in the backyard growing up. Dylan looks up to Jordan. To see them connect on a good play, jumping on each other and high fiving, it was so much fun to watch.”

Dylan Faison transferred to Saint Andrew’s after his brother graduated from Pine Crest. As a junior this spring, he posted 100 points on 67 goals and 33 assists.

“I’m bummed, but I’m not surprised he’s leaving,” said Nick Testa, a Johns Hopkins commit and Saint Andrew’s teammate. “It stinks, but his game is college-ready already. Like, if he played this year, it wouldn’t even be fun for him. He would just run through the defense. It’d be bad.”

Perhaps the happiest are parents Kristen and Quincy Faison, who are considering establishing a residence near South Bend.

“It’s going to be really cool,” Quincy Faison said. “They really gelled when they played together. It was almost like playing in the backyard, where you know where that one person is going to be, or you can just look at somebody’s eyes and not say a word and know exactly where they’re heading.”

The Faison brothers’ speed, explosiveness, shiftiness and physicality often garner praise. But behind the scenes the two also worked countless hours in the gym and in their backyard thanks to the culture of hard work fostered by their parents. The disciplined approach paid off.

“They tell you that you have to have your priorities straight and cherish the things that you value, because you don’t want to regret anything in the future,” Jordan Faison said. “And having that discipline, I carried that with me throughout my time in sports and really any aspect of life. And I’m very grateful to them for that.”

The sacrifices included moving to Long Island for summers of lacrosse that helped fuel the brothers’ competitive fire and improve their recruiting prospects. Even as they heard plenty of people telling them how good they were, each found reasons to play with a chip on his shoulder and felt driven to excel.

“Dylan has the alpha mentality of, ‘I’m better than you,’” Team 91 director Sal LoCascio said. “‘I’m not just going to beat you, I’m going to break your will.’ That’s how he plays. It’s not enough just to win. He wants to break you.”

Notre Dame coaches could not comment on Dylan Faison until he signed his NLI, but those who have played with or coached him through high school agree that his upside is enormous.

“In 28 years of high school, he’s the best I’ve ever seen. And then as a college coach for 32 years, he’s as good as any kid I’ve ever recruited,” said Saint Andrew’s coach Tony Seaman, who previously coached at Penn, Johns Hopkins and Towson. “He’s got that kind of skill.”

If his game translates into anything like that of his brother, the Irish are in luck. In football, Jordan Faison has emerged as Notre Dame’s top receiver after making the team as a walk-on three years ago. He also started all 17 games for the 2024 national champion Irish lacrosse team as a freshman and had 14 points in 12 games last spring — after he helped the Irish football team reach the national championship game.

“In both, you’re at a position to make plays,” Corrigan said. “The guys that get in trouble, particularly in lacrosse, are the ones that don’t have the patience or the ability to make decisions well enough. They’re forcing plays and trying to make something happen when it’s not there. Jordan has a pretty good head on his shoulders. He just doesn’t do that.”

The brothers have similar movement patterns, just packaged in slightly different frames. Dylan Faison is 6-foot-2 and has always been long and lean compared to Jordan Faison’s stockier 5-foot-10 build. Their personalities also differ, according to their parents.

“Jordan has always been a rule follower, so when he’s told to do something, he’s going to do that,” Kristen Faison said. “Dylan, on the other hand, is a free thinker. And he will take many risks and worry about it later.”

Friends describe Jordan as the introvert and Dylan the extrovert. If anyone can rein in Dylan’s appetite for risk and socializing, however, it’s Jordan. Dylan grew up admiring his brother and listened to him when they played together in high school.

“Those years that they played together at high school against us, big brother was in control and if his little brother was trying to do too much or show too much, he was told so,” Seaman said. “That was obvious when you coached against them. That’s going to be a real benefit for the coaching staff at Notre Dame. It’s like a buffer.”

The Faison brothers are not the only Notre Dame athletes juggling football and lacrosse. Matt Jeffery, a highly ranked lacrosse recruit from Connecticut, took to Jordan as a mentor last year. Not that Dylan needs any big brothering.

“He’s grown now. He has a voice of his own,” Jordan Faison said. “There’s no more watching over him. He’s become a man and it’s time to roll.”

When they last played lacrosse together, Dylan operated more as an X attackman than midfielder. He fed Jordan plenty, and Jordan caught every pass he threw. “It just made my game look much better,” Dylan said. Now they’re both going to be in the midfield.

When Jordan left for college, Dylan didn’t have anyone with that deep of a connection on the field, and at home he was suddenly an only child. It’s helped him mature and chart his own path.

“With him leaving the house, for me a big thing is just getting my mental right,” he said. “That is everything, especially in sports.”

By all accounts — including Jordan’s — Dylan is better at his age than Jordan was. He can do it all. LoCascio put him on the wings for faceoffs and said he was Team 91’s best defensive midfielder and best offensive player, period. Testa has seen him excel even as a long pole. Dylan was ranked as a midfielder the No. 1 lacrosse player in the Class of 2026 by Inside Lacrosse, National Lacrosse Federation and Prep Lacrosse. Jordan was ranked 48th by Inside Lacrosse in 2023 out of Pine Crest.

“Jordan definitely helped Dylan and showed him the way,” Harris said. “But Dylan is extremely skilled and fun to watch. He’s one of the best out there right now for his age.”

Dylan is a three-star football recruit, who according to MaxPreps caught 53 passes for 849 yards and 10 touchdowns to help Saint Andrew’s reach their first 10-win season and the second round before bowing out of the playoffs despite two touchdowns from him.

Jordan was only a two-star football recruit. He played quarterback at Pine Crest, racking up more than 1,800 all-purpose yards and 26 touchdowns as a senior. Not only did he walk on at Notre Dame, but he did so while learning a new position as a receiver.

“It definitely kept me humble,” he said. “Nothing’s going to be handed to you. You’ve got to go out and get it yourself.”

In November, Faison was named one of 10 semifinalists for the Burlsworth Award, given to the top football player in America who began his career as a walk-on. He leads the Irish with 49 catches for 640 yards and has four touchdowns. He’s also their top punt returner. He had three catches for 68 yards and a touchdown in Notre Dame’s 49-20 win at Stanford on Saturday, the team’s 10th straight win to improve to 10-2. Receivers coach Mike Brown wasn’t hired until the end of Faison’s freshman season, so he can only speculate why he was so underrated.

“It could be a size thing,” Brown said. “Sometimes guys that play multiple positions, it’s a little bit tougher to project and figure out where they fit in college.”

Football played a big role in Dylan Faison’s decision to graduate high school early and start his college career. He wants to get ahead in learning the Notre Dame football team’s system and plays. It also will allow him to focus exclusively on football — and a potential future in the NFL — as a senior.

“That can be very stressful, trying to decide whether you want to play your senior year of a sport that you’ve always played since you were young or potentially not doing that and missing out on something for another bigger opportunity,” he said. “As we saw with Jordan, he now has to make a choice and it’s a hard choice.”

Jordan Faison will rejoin the lacrosse team at the conclusion of this football season as he has each previous year, but he could face a pull between preparing for the NFL draft vs. playing his senior season of lacrosse in 2027.

“God has him and God’s guiding his path,” his brother said. “Whatever comes, comes.”

Playing both football and lacrosse at a school that’s a national championship contender in both sports is not for the faint of heart. Notre Dame’s sports performance staff monitors Faison’s workloads, down to how many sprints he can run and if he needs to adjust his lifting regimen. He doesn’t participate in fall ball for lacrosse during football season, nor does he make every spring football activity while playing lacrosse.

“Both sports want him full-time, so it’s a lot of conversation, a lot of sacrificing, a lot of communicating,” Brown said. “But those are all good things.”

Corrigan and his staff originally slotted Faison as a defensive midfielder to limit having to cram offense, rides and clears into his abbreviated onboarding for lacrosse. The plan lasted less than two weeks.

“We completely abandoned that. He’s able to handle this and able to catch on to things quickly,” Corrigan said. “He’s very smart, very intuitive. And so quickly he became a two-way middie for us. That was probably the biggest surprise to me.”

What’s not a surprise is that the Faisons prioritize academics over both football and lacrosse. Kristen Faison was a computer science major at Bucknell, where she and Quincy met. She was a thrower on the track and field team, a discipline she picked up late in high school. She was strong and coachable, earning consecutive Pennsylvania state titles in discus in her only two years competing. She’s now a software analyst.

Quincy Faison played football and wrestled for Woodward Academy in Georgia, but an injury from a car accident derailed his football future and he focused on wrestling at Bucknell while earning dual degrees in economics and legal studies. He’s an entrepreneur.

Neither parent knew anything about lacrosse when Jordan started playing at the behest of a football teammate. As a result, they became students of the game. Quincy was tougher on Jordan than he was Dylan, having coached both in Pop Warner football. Kristen tried to incorporate some of the torque and hip action that had made her a champion thrower. If either of the boys needed someone to shoot with, she happily grabbed as stick.

“They spent hours out in the backyard perfecting their craft. Broke a couple windows, maybe hit the roof on a couple of neighbors along the way who were not very appreciative of it,” she said. “That was our life.”

The summer before Jordan’s freshman year of high school, the family rented a recreational vehicle and traversed the eastern seaboard following Team 91. The WiFi stunk, so the brothers rode bikes, visited Long Island beaches, played video games and bowled in their spare time.

Dylan’s own Team 91 experience got off to a rocky start. Playing time was sparse. He used it as motivation.

“I have an elite group of players, but he was different,” LoCascio said. “He had a quickness that to date I haven’t seen in anybody in the age group. He’s got a shake like nobody else that I’ve seen in the age group. And here’s what I didn’t know which I know now: He’s as tough as they come. He’s just different.”

The Faison family eventually rented a home in Bayside, New York, and they welcomed to it other Florida players like Testa, Brown commit Jake Ivancevic, Army commit Remi DeOrsey and Dartmouth commit Blake Farnsworth. They bonded as out-of-towners trying to cut their teeth in a lacrosse hotbed.

“The first two summers were just training nonstop,” Testa said. “It was waking up at 7 in the morning, going to the gym for like two hours with our trainer up in New York. And then after that, we would have practice.”

Team 91 Storm was barely a top-40 team when LoCascio inherited the 2026 group, but Dylan Faison told him they’d win a club national championship. “I built a team around him,” LoCascio said.

Faison fulfilled that promise in July 2024, when the team defeated Long Island Express for the NLF title at Stony Brook’s LaValle Stadium. Two months later, he committed to Notre Dame as the nation’s No. 1 recruit.

He’ll look to replicate that success at the college level. At least for this year, the opportunity comes with his brother at his side once more.