A Night The Burns' Family Will Never Forget

By John Brice
Special Contributor

The entire journey had been a leap of faith.

Paddy Burns grew up playing soccer, entrenched a soccer-centric family, and knew that he wanted to continue his playing career, as well as his education, at the best possible destination.

Site unseen, the Crumlin, Northern Ireland-native penned a letter to Notre Dame coach Chad Riley and the Fighting Irish coaching staff and simultaneously applied for admission to Our Lady’s University.

“I was never actually recruited by Notre Dame; I was actually a walk-on,” said Burns, a junior defender for a Notre Dame program seeking a second-straight College Cup berth and to defend its 2021 ACC crown. “I got in based on my academics, which was a really proud moment for me. 

“I e-mailed the coaches and said, ‘Listen, I’d absolutely love to play on your soccer team.’ They took a chance on me and told me I could try to play on the team and since that moment I’ve tried every day to repay the opportunities given to me.”

The journey required all the patience Burns could muster from the very outset. As the world worked to persevere through the COVID-19 pandemic throughout the 2020 calendar year, Burns found his visa process delayed as a result. 

He missed the opening days of the Fighting Irish’s soccer workouts.

He was undeterred. 

“Probably the best decision I’ve ever made is coming here, I’m just so happy, and that was my first time on campus,” Burns said of his August 2020 arrival. “I was delayed and missed the first few days of preseason because of Covid’s impact on the visa application, and I actually arrived the night before classes on Aug. 9, 2020. 

“I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have any supplies, no way to take notes. I was taking notes on my phone.” 

After that initial class, now-senior midfielder PJ Bujouves introduced himself to Burns and, though himself a Toronto, Ontario, native, Bujouves became a steadfast mentor to Burns.

Still, the transition to life at an American university maintained its challenges. Through his first two years, as the world gradually climbed from the depths of the Covid pandemic, Burns never got to experience a stateside visit from his family.

Typically, he spent a couple weeks on Christmas break and a couple more in the summer back home in Ireland.

With their two youngest sons now on Notre Dame’s picturesque campus, including freshman Malachi, and their oldest son, Bobby, back home playing professional soccer for Glentoran F.C. in the Northern Ireland Football League, Thérése and Thomas Burns planned a long-overdue trip to see their sons, embrace the Fighting Irish community – soccer and otherwise – and, naturally, take in a soccer match.

Or two.

“We had been hoping to get over here, but of course Covid restrictions prevented us from doing so,” Mrs. Burns said. “We were going to base our trip around soccer matches, and believe you me, until Thomas Burns was assured we could see two matches we couldn’t finalize a trip. 

“I can’t believe the wonderful friends and opportunities that soccer has given our sons, and we have given our lives over to taxiing them to their soccer matches. I always wanted to encourage culture and theater, but everything for the boys was based around soccer. We can’t get over the family that is Notre Dame, the pastoral care is outstanding.”

The past week on Notre Dame’s campus saw the words from the university’s acceptance letters actualizing themselves for the entire Burns family. 

“Two words that were used in the letters to our boys were ‘Welcome home,’” Thérése Burns said. “I think that says everything. 

“I still feel the shivers here. When we arrived, we said it ourselves, ‘We’re home. We’re home.’ I don’t even want to go home.”

Thérése and Thomas Burns now are going home with a “shivers-inspiring” experience and memories more suited to a Hollywood script than an Indiana autumn.

In last Wednesday’s 4-0 win against Chicago State, Paddy Burns produced the first two-goal game of his collegiate career. The victory lifted the Irish to a 3-2-1 ledger on the season, though they dipped back to 3-3-1 after Saturday’s narrow 1-0 defeat to perennial power North Carolina.

𝗕𝗨𝗥𝗡𝗦 𝗕𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗘

Take a bow Paddy Burns! Fantastic curling effort from the LB finds the back of the net for his second of the evening! Irish lead 4-0.

💻: https://t.co/UPPr3pPCx6 pic.twitter.com/o3ueulvtGO

— Notre Dame Men’s Soccer (@NDMenSoccer) September 22, 2022

Even so, Burns uncorked a pair of shots on goal that nearly provided the equalizer in the game’s second half. Teammates told Burns’s parents that they both provided the team good luck and likewise prompted some additional cleaning efforts from Paddy in his dorm room.

Thomas Burns finally got to witness in person the moments that for the past three years have made the family an international subscriber to the ACC Network – and victim of many a late nights and early mornings.

“Patrick was playing and he wanted to go to university, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do at university, and this opportunity came open,” said Thomas Burns, who works for the government and sits on a number of local boards back home in Northern Ireland. “He had a friend who told him about Notre Dame and the soccer. It was all completely new to us. He was going so far away, and we were all nervous at the start, but boy has it worked out well. It’s just been incredible. 

“We don’t get to see them much at all. The most we see of Paddy is on the television, watching their matches. Time is very limited. We watch television through the internet; I pay my subscription to the ACC Network.”

Those Irish matches typically do not start until midnight in Ireland and conclude around or after 2 a.m.

If there is a broadcast of the game, the parents never miss.

Paddy Burns feels their support; he’s still absorbing their visit here beneath the Golden Dome. 

“It’s their first-ever trip to campus since I’ve been here,” said Burns, a former student-body president at St. Malachi’s College who’s now started 44 of 48 career games here at Notre Dame. “It was just magnificent to see them in the stands, and it probably still hasn’t sunk in. For them to see how beautiful it is, and not over a FaceTime call which just doesn’t do this place justice. There was definitely some extra motivation. I’m just so glad it’s worked out and they were able to make it over. We’re just loving life here at Notre Dame.”

Burns and his Irish teammates likewise have found added motivation from both their remarkable success and bitter disappointment from last season.  

“I said to the lads, ‘It’s going to make it nicer,’ and that defeat (in the College Cup against Clemson) has made us all the more hungry this year,” said Paddy Burns, now with six career goals and six assists. “We lost a lot of great friends and players from that team, and now I’m taking on a leadership role within our program. It’s important for me to take over where this team left off. 

“The goal for us always is going to be to win national championships here at Notre Dame. I hope and believe we can get the job done.”