By MARK MOSCHETTI
Seattle Pacific Sports Information
 
SEATTLE – Every time she stepped onto the court last winter, Ashlynn Burgess made an impression.
 
Some of it showed up in the stats: scoring, rebounding, field goal shooting.
 
Some of it showed up in the intangibles: drive, work ethic, grasp of the game.
 
But the very first impression Burgess made on the Seattle Pacific women's basketball program didn't happen on the court at all.
 
 

It happened when Burgess showed up on the sidewalk outside of Brougham Pavilion . . .
 
. . . at 5:45 a.m.
 
"She said she was going to be flying into Seattle (from her home in Alaska), and I said, 'Hey, you should come on an unofficial visit when you come through Seattle,'" Falcons head coach Mike Simonson recalled of that encounter in August 2018. "She said, 'OK, that sounds great.' I asked her what time she was getting in, and she said, 'Coach, I get in at 5 in the morning.'
 
"So Ashlynn met me here at 5:45. I showed her around campus in the middle of August and we had breakfast."
 
But Burgess wasn't empty-handed when she arrived on the corner of 3^rd and Nickerson, a few minutes before sunrise.
 
She was carrying her basketball.
 
"She comes up and she's holding her Spalding basketball, and she says, 'Hey Coach, is there going to be time when I can get into the gym and get some shots up?' Unfortunately, I couldn't let her into the gym at that time (using facilities is not allowed on unofficial visits). But that was the first thing she asked me, and she had a basketball under her arm.
 
"That's Ashlynn to a 'T' "
 
As much of an impression as she made on Simonson, Burgess – who then was getting ready for her second and final year at Wenatchee Valley College, but thereafter would need to find someplace to continue her college career – was impressed, as well. She ultimately committed to join the Falcons beginning in 2019.
 
"I was really excited because staying in Washington was something I think I wanted to do," said Burgess, who hails from Eagle River, Alaska, located 15 miles northeast of Anchorage. "I'd visited Seattle a couple times, and I liked the area.
 
"After talking to the coaches, I knew I wanted to come here. I waited a little bit to decide. But this is where I wanted to be."
 
MORE THAN JUST HOOPS – WAY MORE
A pair of high school all-state awards. Multiple MVP honors and a championship in community college. All-Great Northwest Athletic Conference honorable mention recognition last winter after making the transition to NCAA Division II play at Seattle Pacific.
 
And a list of favorite athletes that includes Kobe Bryant.
 
"He always worked super-hard and was never afraid to take a shot, Burgess said. "One game, he air-balled probably five shots in a row, then shoots the next one with complete confidence and just makes it. That was something I took into my game: Never be afraid if you know you're going to hit the shot."

 

It might be easy to think that basketball is all there is to Ashlynn Burgess.
 
But here's the thing: That list of favorite athletes extends way beyond basketball icons such as Bryant. Swimming superstar Michael Phelps is on it. So is speedskater Apolo Ohno. And snowboarder Shaun White. Every one of them an Olympic gold medalist.
 
"We always watch the Olympics, Burgess said of her family, which includes three older brothers and an older sister – all of them athletically inclined in different ways. "If the Olympics were on, that's what our family was doing."
 
A list of Burgess' own athletic pursuits is just as widely varied as her list of favorite athletic stars. She played soccer. Baseball. Volleyball. Even tried swimming, "but I've never been really good at it."
 
That multi-faceted mindset extends beyond basketball . She's as passionate about academics as she is about athletics. Burgess has taken six years of French. Two of Spanish. And now in college, she sports a near-perfect 3.99 grade-point average as an electrical engineering major.
 

"I started in the sciences route on a pre-med track," she said. "Sophomore year, after I took engineering physics, I said, 'OK, I like physics. I like math. I'm going to go engineering."
 
There's also a prominent spot in her life for faith. Her father is a pastor, and Ashlynn has done various kinds of missionary work around Alaska, from Yakutat to Kodiak to Valdez to Dillingham.
 
"My parents are pastoring in Dillingham. I actually got the opportunity to go out there right after my senior year (of high school) and help them with some foundation work and construction work," she said. "It was the first year of my dad coming in there and building the church. It was so fun – digging dirt until midnight, singing with people, and having a good time."
 
BOUNCING BACK IN A BIG WAY
That's a lot of life to juggle when each day has just 24 hours.
 
"Balance is definitely something you learn as you go," Burgess said. "Basketball is kind of like one of my passions. It's easy for me to show up every day because it's where I want to be. It's definitely had to find time for myself and my friends and family and everything. But I'm very thankful that I have friends here and family who keep me accountable in that."
 
Sometimes, that hoops passion has been rudely interrupted by injuries – in particular to her left knee, which has endured three operations.
 
The most serious of those was after Burgess' sophomore year at Chugiak High School: a torn anterior cruciate ligament and torn meniscus. She was sidelined for 18 months.
 
"It shook me a little bit," Burgess acknowledged. "I didn't know if I wanted to play."
 
She was finally cleared in December of her senior year, just as the 2016-17 season was ready to begin. Burgess came back in fine form, averaging a double-double of 12 points and 10 rebounds, helping Chugiak take fourth place in the state tournament.
 
A whirlwind tour of several Washington community colleges ultimately led Burgess to Wenatchee Valley. Her first year there, playing in the post, the 5-foot-10 Burgess poured in 528 points (18.2 per game) and grabbed 227 rebounds (7.8).

"My freshman year was really competitive. We had 16 freshmen and on sophomore. You had to learn to be competitive every day," Burgess said. "We bonded a lot as a team over the really grueling workouts."
 
Then as a sophomore in 2018-19, she tallied another 610 points to become the all-time leading scorer for the Knights, pulled down another 227 boards and led the team to a 28-5 record – the 28^th of those victories coming by a 74-70 margin against Umpqua in the Northwest Athletic Conference (NWAC) championship game.
 
"It was really fun. That was a great team with great chemistry, which is really important for any winning team," said Burgess, who was named the tournament MVP, the NWAC Player of the Year, and the NWAC East Region MVP.
 
FITTING RIGHT IN WITH THE FALCONS
Mike Simonson saw Burgess play during the winter of 2018 when he was still SPU's lead assistant coach and she was a freshman at Wenatchee Valley.
 
A few months later, Simonson had taken over as head coach after Julie Heisey stepped down, and he knew the Falcons were needing to recruit at forward.
 
"I ran into her Wenatchee coach (Rachel Goetz) in this far-off gym in the middle of nowhere, and we just started talking about Ashlynn," Simonson said. "She told me all about her qualities as a leader and how hard she works. I fell in love with all those elements to her and figured she would be a great fit."

 

A great fit, indeed. In last year's season opener and her SPU debut at Humboldt State, she started and logged a double-double of 18 points and 11 rebounds in 26 minutes.
 
What's more, even before her first Falcons tip-off, Burgess was in the center circle meeting with the officials as an SPU co-captain, along with now-graduated Hailee Bennett.
 
"I think everyone was a little shocked by it, but I don't think I was," junior Rachel Berg said of Burgess being named a captain in her first year. "We have our core values, and No. 1 is passion. She just really exhibited that one, and the coaches saw that in her."
 
That certainly was on display after practice one afternoon. While other players were heading back to the locker room, Burgess approached Ashley Alter, regarded as SPU's quickest player. Burgess wanted to work on improving her defense against quick players. So she asked if Alter would play the entire time on offense while Burgess would play the entire time on defense.
 
Alter laughed as she remembered that moment, then said, "I think it was something unexpected, but it was cool that she reached out like that. … Normally when a new person comes in, they'll be a little timid to learn the system and can't fully show their abilities right away. But she was so comfortable, and the transition didn't take her long at all. I feel like she adapted fast and really showed her skills right away."
 
RARIN' TO RETURN
Burgess kept showing those skills, ranking among the GNAC leaders in scoring, rebounding, and field goal shooting. She wound up her first SPU campaign with averages of 11.3 points, 5.8 rebounds (factoring into four double-doubles) and .548 field goal shooting – even while missing three late-season games because of a concussion.
 
"I didn't really know what to expect coming to D2 from junior college," she said. "I was really excited to get to play and of course, I wanted to succeed as highly as I could. I do wish I was able to play all those games when I was out with a concussion – that was a big bummer.
 
"But seeing how the team grew from that, knowing they could step up like that is really important going into this year. That was really cool to see."
 
Going into this year. For now, that very notion is still fraught with uncertainty because of the coronavirus pandemic.
 
Burgess is taking it one day at a time. While home in Alaska this past summer and recovering from some additional knee surgery in June, she kept busy with biking, physical therapy, and "a lot of push-ups and a lot of air squats" at home since gyms were closed.
 
She also reached out to Simonson at least once a week for film sessions.
 
"We would watch old games against Billings, old games against Saint Martin's and Simon Fraser so she could learn and keep growing because she couldn't get onto a court in Alaska during quarantine," he said. "That just shows you who she is."
 
Burgess binge-watched all six seasons of "Psych." In the kitchen, she enhanced her cooking skills, learning to make ratatouille (yup, just like the Disney movie of the same name).
 
Now that she's back in Seattle, Burgess is as forward-focused as ever, even though games aren't slated to start until January.

 
"I really want to play with the whole team and practice with the whole team," Burgess said, noting that practice is currently limited to pods of five players because of the pandemic. "It was super-exciting to get back to campus. We're here, practices are starting … it's just exciting."
 
For Ashlynn Burgess, it's also another opportunity to make an impression – sometimes in the stats, sometimes in the intangibles.
 
Even if it's not quite as early as 5:45 a.m.