This Irish Rugby Player Became BC’s Football Kicker

Five years ago, Andy Quinn ’28 was living on his family’s beef farm in Galway, Ireland, and had never touched an American football. Today, he’s the place kicker and punter on the BC football team. His journey to the Heights was quite the whirlwind. In 2021, Quinn, who played high school rugby and Gaelic football, was living with his grandmother while his brother underwent cancer treatment. He began visiting a local rugby field to practice kicking for several hours daily “to clear my head,” he said. The following year, Quinn won a contest by hitting two forty-five-yard field goals during halftime of the Aer Lingus College Football Classic in Dublin. It was the first time he’d ever kicked a pigskin, and the feat led to an offer to train for a year at England’s NFL Academy, after which he earned a full scholarship to BC. In 2025, his first season as an Eagle, he enjoyed showing the former Prime Minister of Ireland around campus, living in Boston (which is not so different than Dublin, he said), and nailing a sixty-eight-yard punt (BC’s longest in three years) against the SMU Mustangs during the annual Red Bandana Game. “That was really special,” he said, “It felt like me realizing that I’m able to compete at this level.” ◽