By MARK MOSCHETTI
Seattle Pacific Sports Information
 
SEATTLE – Hunter Beirne dribbles the ball up the court, surveying the scene. There's plenty of time on the shot clock, and her Seattle Pacific teammates are looking for any bit of daylight they can find against the Northwest Nazarene defense.
 
Madison Rubino finds some of that daylight – and just like that, Beirne finds her with a pinpoint pass that Rubino easily converts into a driving layup.
 
A little more than a minute later, Beirne finds some more daylight. But this time, it's her daylight, and she drains a 3-point dagger.
 
 

By the end of that particular Thursday evening in Brougham Pavilion, Beirne will have dished three assists and poured in 26 points to help the Falcons breeze past the visiting Nighthawks, 93-70.
 
So … what's more satisfying to this proficient, perseverant, passionate, self-acknowledged perfectionist of a point guard:
 
Passing off to a fellow Falcon for a basket ...

... or burying one herself?
 
"Any time you see the ball go through the net it's a good feeling, whether it's me hitting it or passing to a teammate to hit it," Beirne said. "Each one makes me pretty happy."
 
Senior wing Lolo Weatherspoon –the recipient of many Beirne passes that have led to baskets, whether from right in front of the hoop or from behind the arc – laughed when told of Beirne's response to that particular question.
 

"That's a very Hunter answer, for sure," Weatherspoon said. "She has found me for so many good looks. She has found her own looks. She's just a fun soul  to be around and she brings a lot of life to the team."
 
On Saturday afternoon, Beirne will bring it for one final time when she and the Falcons step onto their home court against Simon Fraser at 2:00 p.m. It'll be Senior Day in honor of Beirne, Weatherspoon, center Schuyler Berry, and wing Peyton Bergevin.
 
In Beirne's case, it will mark the conclusion of a career that has spanned six seasons: a redshirt year in 2019-20, an injury-shortened Covid season in the winter of 2021, a gradual return to action in 2021-22, then full-time as the starting point guard in 82 of the 83 games she has played the past three seasons combined.
 
"I can't believe it's coming to an end – it's been such a big part of my life," Beirne said. "But I think it feels right."
 
PAINFUL SOUND, PAINFUL INJURY
It's the one sound … that ear-splitting, gut-wrenching, god-awful sound … that no one ever wants to hear. Not from one your team's players, not from an opposing player.
 
But hang around a gym long enough and watch enough basketball games, and you're bound to hear it at some point. It's half screaming, half crying, interrupted by intermittent breaths to scream and cry some more. And those who've hung around those gyms know exactly what usually happened when that sound pierces the air:
 
 

Someone just tore the anterior cruciate ligament in one of her knees.
 
Hunter Beirne knows all about that – times two. She missed her senior season at Kamiak High School in Mukilteo, north of Seattle in neighboring Snohomish County, after tearing her right ACL. That ultimately factored into her redshirting during her true freshman year at SPU in 2019-20.
 
"I had almost fully recovered by that point," Beirne recalled. "Coming off that and fully adapting to the college scene and college (style of) play, it seemed better just to get acclimated and do some ore strengthening."
 
Then came Covid, and the 2020-21 season was canceled. However, teams were allowed to schedule non-conference games against any opponents they could find. Standings wouldn't be kept; playoffs wouldn't take place. But at least they could play games.
 
Beirne dazzled in the opener against Pacific Lutheran. She hit the first seven shots of her career, finishing the night with 17 points, five rebounds and her first college assist (and doing it against a Lutes team that had current SPU assistant coach Ava Edmonds in their starting lineup).
 
Then four nights later, she again was seeing action off the bench against Saint Martin's in Brougham Pavilion. It was during the third quarter, when it happened again – this time with her left knee.
 
"To make things worse, it was Covid, so there was nobody there," Beirne said. (At that time, no fans were allowed to watch.) "It was startlingly quiet. I was in disbelief. It's such a long recovery. (Some say nine months, but in many cases, especially when it happens to a female athlete, it can take at least a year, sometimes a bit longer.)
 
"So having gone through it once, you already know the moment it happens what you have ahead of you," she added. "I knew that unfortunately, the timing of it meant that I wouldn't be back until halfway through the next season."
 
KEEPING THE FAITH – AND THEN THRIVING
Two knees, two torn ACLs – barely two years apart.
 
For some athletes, that might have reason enough to call it a career and pursue something else.
 
Hunter Beirne wasn't one of those athletes. She kept pushing forward, pushing through the grind of rehabbing her knee, pushing toward competing again.
 
In her mind, there was no doubt where that kind of drive was coming from.
 
"Definitely my faith. Just being able to trust that Jesus was in all of it and he obviously had a plan for me," she said. "Looking back at these last two years that I've had, I wouldn't have ever had them without either surgery.:
 
On the basketball floor, they have been the two best years of Beirne's career. She started 25 of the 26 games she played in 2023-24, averaging 9.5 points, 4.0 rebounds, and handing out 64 assists.
 
This winter has been even better. Beirne has started all 30 games. She leads the Falcons in scoring at 14.0 points per game (No. 9 in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference) and in playmaking at 3.8 assists (No. 6) – making her one of just three GNAC players to rank top 10 in both categories.
 
Her 420 points and 114 assists are single-season bests. She's the team's first triple-digit playmaker in the past 10 seasons. And she's shooting better than ever: .433 overall from the field, .322 from 3-point range and .776 at the free throw line.
 
In the classroom, having already completed her undergrad double-major in Politics / Philosophy / Economics, and in Global Development, Beirne is putting the finishing touches on her Master of Arts in Teaching (with a perfect 4.0 grade-point average). She will do her student teaching this spring at Meadowdale High School in Edmonds, just north of Seattle.
 
"Doing my masters in teaching, that wasn't something that I originally had planned," said Beirne, a four-time GNAC All-Academic honoree. "So that extra time from my redshirt year and the injury year gave me more time to pursue it and find something that I was passionate about moving forward. That, and the girls on the team are some of my best friends, and I never would have played with them.
 
"I hope it has been character-building in me, and that the lessons I've learned and the growth I've had is something I'll take with me into my next season of life," she added. "I don't know if I would have been as grateful if I hadn't had an injury."
 
MASTER OF THE POINT GUARD ART
While she wraps up her academic master's, Beirne certainly could qualify as a professor to teach the art of being a point guard.
 
If she wanted, she could be a shooting guard. And at 5-foot-7, she possibly could even slide into the small forward spot if the need arose.
 
 

But pretty much from the time she first picked up a basketball – and we're talking age 3 here – Beirne, who's now 23, never really wanted to be anywhere else on the floor.
 
"I've played that position my whole life. It's a lot of directing and lot of getting people on the same page … That comes sort of naturally to me."
 
Falcons coach Karen Byers saw those qualities in Beirne almost immediately, even before she had a chance to see her in action on the court. Byers joined the Falcons in the fall of 2022 as an assistant coach, moved up to lead assistant last season, and is serving this season as the interim head coach.
 
Her first true connection on the team was with Beirne.
 
"Hunter was the first player to come in and sit down and try to get to know me," Byers said. "I had talked to others, but she was the first one who sought me out. And we had a lovely conversation.
 
"From there, I've just seen her grow so much as a person, but also as a leader and the quarterback of this team."
 
 

Senior center Schuyler Berry has seen that, too, whether it's time to get serious or time to have some fun.
 
"You could see that Hunter's such a competitor on the court. But she's also such a fantastic teammate and one of my best friends," Berry said, then adding with a laugh, "She's in the lower gym right now doing a line dance – she's awesome. And she's a great shooter who has put up some crazy points this year."
 
TAKING THE SHOTS – AND SOMETIMES CALLING THEM
Indeed, Beirne's 420 points this season include a career high of 30 at Central Washington on Jan. 16. That was the middle game of a three-game stretch that started with 28 points against Western Oregon and concluded with 26 at Northwest Nazarene. Along with that 30-pointer, she has seven games of 20-plus so far.
 

"I always thought that was a possibility," she said of her increased point production. "I know traditionally, point guards don't score in high numbers. I like to score and I like to see what I can get. (The system) we ran this year is conducive to how I like to play and how I can be efficient in scoring. All the pieces clicked this year for that to work."
 
Like point guards everywhere, Beirne is the general out there. But she also is the coach on the floor, and when the situation warrants it, has earned the right to make a decision or make a call on her own.
 
"What's the defense in? Who's on the court? How much time is on the shot clock and game clock? What's the score? There's infinite things going through my head depending on what point in the game we're at," Beirne said.
 
Added Byers, "I give her the freedom that if she sees something I don't see, she can call something different. I trust her in that way. She's not only our most valuable player, she has the leadership skills to go along with that. I've had great players before, but they haven't been leaders. To get (those qualities) together and have them for three solid years has been wonderful."
 
Part of Beirne's leadership has been the eager willingness to take players under her wing. One of those has been sophomore Haylie-Anne Ohta, who's also a point guard and has a solid chance of taking over that spot next season.
 
"She's really competitive, and that just brings the competitive side out of everyone in practice," Ohta said. "I've learned a lot from her, just like being the floor general, calling out plays, getting my teammates to their spots and finding them with passes and just being a leader."

BEYOND W's AND L's … WAY BEYOND.
Ohta is just one of the talented players who will still be here next season after Beirne has moved on to the next chapter of life. The current roster also includes two other sophomores in addition to Ohta, two redshirt freshmen, two true freshmen, along with two juniors.
 
"It's a lot of talent and I'm super-excited for them," Beirne said. "You see these glimpses of how great they can be, and they're so young."

 

"When we played at Anchorage (last Saturday), there were a couple of lineups we had where there was a young lineup in there," she continued. "To see their confidence moving the ball and attacking and getting to the hoop against probably the highest-pressure team in the league – oh my gosh, I can imagine by their senior year how good they're going to be having that confidence now."
 
Certainly, it has been a bumpy season for Beirne and her teammates. Several times, they've played quality basketball against quality teams, only to fall short at the end – Northwest Nazarene in Nampa, Montana State Billings in Seattle, to name a couple. Other nights, the Falcons have been right there coming down to the wire, but couldn't get over the hump.
 
Even so, Beirne, who says basketball "is the only thing I get super-competitive in," has seen some bright spots in all of it.
 
"I think it has been really good for all of us to be together in the losses and not just the wins," she said. "I think it strengthened our identity as a team that we would come together no matter what the circumstances are, so those wins are really great when we do get them."
 
Beirne calls herself "a bit of a perfectionist" and a planner, and she takes a certain amount of pride in the fact that her locker is neat and tidy.
 
But at the end of the day – indeed, at the end of her career – she doesn't want her legacy to be wins or losses, points or assists, perfectionism or organized lockers.
 
Rather, she wants it to be about things that can't be quantified or organized in nice, straight rows. She wants it to be about things that can't necessarily be seen or touched …
 
… but definitely can be felt.
 
"I would hope that my teammates would say that I cared about them and that I did my best to be a servant leader, and that my faith would be something that would be remembered," she said. "I'm just really passionate about my teammates as people, not just as basketball players, and how what we're doing here really extends beyond the court.
 
"It took me awhile to learn what my identity is outside of basketball," Beirne said. "I would say the injuries certainly helped me with that. Winning or losing isn't the end of the world. How you handle those, how you treat the people you're around, the attitude you have …
 
… "those are the important things."