SPS Today: Basketball Milestone
Burrows ’19 Scores 1,000th Point
When the shot went through the hoop, and Adia Burrows ’19 turned around to play defense, there was a moment when she nearly forgot what had just happened. One look at the scorer’s table wiped away any doubt. As the buzzer sounded, Burrows’s teammates flooded the court; with three minutes remaining in the first half of the Big Red’s game against visiting Beaver Country Day School, she had just become the second 1,000-point scorer in St. Paul’s School girls basketball history.
“When they buzzed the horn, I cried happy tears,” Burrows says. “It was emotional because not a lot of people have this opportunity, and I was really proud of myself.” When play resumed, Burrows found herself feeling another emotion; relief. Until the start of the 2018-19 season, the 6-0 forward didn’t even realize 1,000 points was a possibility. “It never seemed like I was scoring that much,” she says, “because a lot of my scoring is off assists or picking up after other people’s shots. But, as I got closer and closer, I just wanted to get it done so I could play basketball and not worry about it anymore.”
With the milestone out of the way, Burrows went on to score a season-high 24 points in a 63-58 victory over Beaver on the Big Red’s Senior Night. Burrows is the first girls basketball player to hit the 1,000-point milestone since Stefanie Sparks ’01 earned her 1,000th point as a Fifth Former in February of 2000. Burrows came to SPS from Wilton, Conn., at 13, and was one of the youngest players on the court in her first season. She never let that stop her, as the challenge of playing against older, better competition is something she has relished since she began playing basketball in North Carolina at the age of five. She led the team with 13.6 points and 7.1 rebounds per game in her final season at SPS.
“She has had a standout senior year,” says SPS girls basketball coach Jennifer Fithian. “Her enthusiasm and effort on both ends of the court are contagious.”