Addy Burrow Rediscovers Her Love of Rifle
Fifth-year senior rewriting the Georgia Southern record book
10/31/2023
A Change Would Do You Good.- Sheryl Crow
Addy Burrow rediscovered her love of rifle with one decision, and that change did her good. In one year at Georgia Southern, she accomplished more than she did in three years at North Carolina State.
Career-best scores: check.
Conference shooter of the year: yep.
All-American: you betcha.
USA Shooting National Team: indeed.
NCAA qualifier: absolutely, but more on that later.
Addy Burrow grew up in Williamson, Georgia. She is the second in a line of 13 children of Chris and Esther Burrow. More impressively, she can name off all 13 of her parents’ children, in order, in just over six seconds.
Jack, Addy, Sam, Solomon, Layney, Bella, Eli, Leo, Annie, Lincoln, Henry, Dinah and Saoirse.
Jack is the oldest at 24. Saoirse brings up the rear at four years old. All of them were home schooled, which Addy calls a blessing despite what outsiders may think.
“I think one of the coolest things for me is whenever I tell people I was home schooled and they’re like, ‘oh, that must have been lonely’ or like ‘oh, you must not have had any friends’ or ‘how did you do things’ but I feel like we didn’t have that at all,” Burrow said. “We all have different personalities, different things that we’re good at, and different experiences even though we all grew up in the same house. But being around each other so much, we built a strong relationship. It’s something that a lot of people don’t get to have, even if they have siblings. So I feel like how we were all raised to build relationships with each other was really the coolest thing.
“On the flip side, it was a challenge with all those heads in the house, but we worked our way through it. For example, when we were all going somewhere, getting ready was just kind of chaotic. Even if everybody’s getting themselves ready, they’re still like, ‘okay, now I’m ready,’ so now I’m gonna help out with this. That was something we got really, really good at, especially when we did it every Sunday morning getting ready for church. You have to make sure that you’re ready in time just in case we need help with something. Or if we’re doing a special meal or we’re taking something somewhere, we help out so that mom can finish the food and we can help get kids ready. I feel like getting everyone ready on time was something we got pretty good at over the years.”
In rifle, each event is timed and 60 shots can go by quickly if you don’t have a plan. That might explain why Burrow is one of the fastest shooters in the country, routinely finishing with ample time to spare.
Burrow got into shooting thanks to her older brother, Jack, who got interested in archery when he was around 10. But there was no archery program for him to participate in, so their mother found a BB gun program through 4-H, and her dad asked her if she wanted to join. And the rest, as they say, is history.
“I got really into the competition part of it immediately,” Burrow said. “It took a while for my other brother to warm up to competitions, but he eventually did. And then the coach that we had a time after about six months decided he was quitting. So there’s no coach with the BB program, and it was something that we were really into and really wanted to do. So, my dad volunteered to become the coach. There was one point in time when the entire team of five was his children. So it was me, my older brother, and then the next three all shooting match together as a team.”
Nine of the 13 children have been through the BB safety course (the other four aren’t old enough yet) and their father is still coaching to this day.
Burrow transitioned from BB shooting to sporter shooting and eventually found her groove with precision shooting, particularly in air gun, around age 14.
“I tried smallbore a few times,” she remembers. “They didn’t really have equipment that was working for me. I’m very short. I was very small then, and it was just causing a lot of pain, so I didn’t train for it. I shot a few matches here and there. I eventually bought a gun and started training smallbore my senior year of high school.”
With a late start in smallbore—one of the two disciplines in NCAA rifle—she wasn’t a household name to college coaches and had to email schools to try and draw attention. NC State finally reached out and worked out a scholarship plan to allow her to shoot for the Wolfpack.
“My parents made the decision that financially they weren’t going to be able to help us out with college, which makes perfect sense,” Burrow said. “So the coach worked with me to figure out how to arrange my scholarship so that I could come to school and afford it, and I felt like I was wanted there. And that’s one of the main reasons I decided to go there.”
Her younger brother, Sam, took a gap year after he finished high school and joined her in Raleigh in her junior year.
Thanks to earning an associate degree while still in high school, she graduated from NC State in five semesters with a degree in art studies with a minor in entrepreneurship.
A coaching change at NC State, coupled with Sam not returning to the Wolfpack squad, and a degree in hand all added up to Burrow deciding not to return to NC State. She could have moved onto post-rifle life or tried to shoot professionally, but eventually, she decided to enter the NCAA Transfer Portal with two years of eligibility remaining.
“I decided before I went into the Portal, I wanted to be closer to home, and I wanted to be somewhere completely different,” Burrow said. “I wanted to be part of something new. I wanted to be with a coaching staff that I knew was going to allow me to be able to grow.”
In the Portal for approximately six hours, she contacted new Georgia Southern head coach, Soren Butler. After a visit to Statesboro, she decided to transfer to be an Eagle, not talking to any other school.
In her first three years at NC State, she averaged 579.1 in smallbore and 588.9 in air rifle. Certainly, respectable numbers and results that put her in contention for NCAA selections. But Burrow wasn’t happy and needed a change.
“I developed a pretty unhealthy relationship with my performance and my scores, and I didn’t feel like I belonged on the team anymore or that I was wanted on the team anymore,” Burrow said. “So the only way I could prove that I was supposed to be there was to shoot well. And so that became an identity thing, and it definitely held me back a lot that year. I felt like I wasn’t being supported as a person or an athlete and that I was not in a great place with sport.
“That’s the only time in my life I’ve ever hated going into practice,” she continued. “I thought about quitting. It’s the only time I’ve ever thought about quitting. People talk about burnout. That is the only time besides in high school when I was being a brat that I seriously thought about not wanting to do this anymore. And I think a lot of it was circumstantial and had mostly nothing to do with the actual sport. But the moment that I called my coach and told her I wanted to enter the Transfer Portal, I felt a weight lifted off of me. I felt 10 times better instantaneously.”
As the song says, “A Change Could Do You Good.”
“I regained a love for the sport that summer, and I started performing at a level I had never performed before,” she said. “I made my first national final and shot personal records by 10 or 15 points. I just loved shooting again. And that allowed me to be a little more free in what I was doing. From the time that I decided to leave NC State until the end of last year, I accomplished almost every single goal that I had set as a freshman, none of which I had accomplished up to that point because I was able to enjoy my sport again. I felt like I was being supported. We’re still not to the best point in the world as far as my relationship with performance, but there are people surrounding me now who quite literally don’t care what I shoot.”
In the end, rifle gave her a path to get two college degrees as she finishes her Master’s degree at Georgia Southern next semester with a degree in professional communications. Burrow has decided that she would like to be an editor for either a book company or newspaper, ideally working in fiction editing and book editing.
“Without rifle, I wouldn’t have gone to college. I really wouldn’t have,” Burrow said. “I would have a much different life and a much different experience in life, not that that’s a bad thing. But I think this sport has allowed me to take opportunities that maybe I was either afraid to take or I didn’t know those options were available for me.”
In her first year in Statesboro, Burrow rewrote the Eagle record book. She held all 10 of the highest single-match aggregate scores. She posted the second-highest air rifle score in program history and had the four-highest smallbore totals. She earned SoCon smallbore and air rifle athlete of the year honors and was named to the USA Shooting National Development Team in air rifle. She averaged a school-record 585.143 in smallbore and 594.00 in air rifle earning CRCA All-America honors in smallbore, air rifle and combined. With dominating performance after performance, Statesboro was turning into StatesBurrow.
On Feb. 18, 2023, Burrow and the rest of her team competed in the NCAA Qualifier for a spot at the national championships. While eight teams make it, only four places for individuals are open in both smallbore and air rifle. Burrow shot a 584 in smallbore, which wouldn’t get her to Akron. She came back—admittedly nervous—and shot a 595 in air rifle, which would be right on the cut line for one of the four spots. While the NCAA doesn’t officially announce the qualifiers until a few days later, all scores are public, and it’s not hard to figure out who did what and who would make it ... if you know the selection process.
“Since freshman year, one of my top goals as far as NCAA rifle was concerned is to go to NCAAs,” Burrow explained. “I missed it by one point in air rifle my freshman year. I missed it by one point in air rifle my sophomore year. I missed it by one point in smallbore my junior year. So I had it was just a struggle. I just couldn’t get there. And I didn’t know why because I knew I was good enough. I just couldn’t perform when I needed to perform. Looking back, obviously, a lot of that was that relationship with performance. But the reality is you have to perform on one day at one specific time in order to be able to qualify.
“So I had in my head what I thought the scores I thought were going to be needed to qualify,” she explained. “Also, it turns out I didn’t know the rules. We were done with the match, and I watched all the other teams shoot and saw how many people had shot higher than me. I came to terms that it probably wasn’t going to happen for me, and I was okay with it. I was upset, but I was okay with it. And then I was on the phone with my boyfriend, Scott, who shoots at Murray State, and I told him that I didn’t think I qualified, and he told me that his coach told him that I did. I didn’t really believe that, and I felt like he was definitely wrong. And then, I tried to figure out what the rules were. I asked my brother, who is now shooting at Jacksonville State, and he wasn’t sure either.”
With no clarity either way, Burrow decided to watch the NCAA Selection Show while getting treatment with athletic trainer Loriann (L.A.)Tedder to see what would happen.
What Burrow didn’t know is the NCAA Rifle Championship involves 48 shooters. With eight teams of five shooters taking 40 of those spots, the individual sports go to the four highest shooters on teams that didn’t make it in smallbore and air rifle, alternating back and forth until all 48 spots are filled. While Burrow ended up having the sixth-best score from the NCAA Qualifier, two shooters made it in both disciplines, opening up a path to her being selected to fill the field of 48.
“I think Coach Butler figured out the rules before it was officially announced, and he had L.A. secretly record me while I was watching it in the training room,” she said. “It was a cool moment to find out I was selected. I didn’t have the performance I wanted to at NCAAs, but I was happy to be there.”
Now with that experience under her belt, she’s primed to make another run to the NCAA Championships. With a strong group of teammates around her helping to elevate the team score, Burrow can’t help but think how much cooler it would be to cap off her NCAA career by qualifying with her team.
“It would be infinitely cooler! Every single person is 110% invested in putting in the work to be the best that we can possibly be, and I think we’re more than good enough to go to NCAAs this year in Morgantown,” Burrow said. “Obviously, we have to perform, and we have to perform at a high level multiple times, but I also feel like we’re in a unique position because, literally, we have nothing to lose. We’ve never qualified before. So if we don’t qualify, we’re right back where we were before standing in the world. And I think a lot of other teams may feel pressured to perform in the way they performed in the past or to qualify because they qualified last year. And I think we are in a spot where we can really embrace the idea of how good we can be and how much work we can put in to be better than we were before. So I think that’s already showing in these first few matches with how committed everybody is to that. So that’s exciting to me.”
Burrow and the Eagles return to action on Sunday at home against Wofford. The 2024 NCAA Rifle Championships will be held March 8-9 at West Virginia University.
