AU Pro Basketball athlete Kirby Burkholder announces retirement

Savanna Collins

Jan 03, 2024

After a ten-year professional career and two seasons with AU Pro Basketball, Kirby Burkholder is hanging up her sneakers after announcing her retirement on Tuesday.

Burkholder was among the inaugural roster of AU Pro Basketball and a member of the Player Executive Committee. Her announcement came in an Instagram post:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kirby Burkholder (@kirby_skye)

She appeared in all thirty games but one across her two seasons and most recently finished the 2023 season with 2,986 leaderboard points. She set a personal career high with 397 leaderboard points against Team Sims in the Week Five opener and posted four games with 300 or more leaderboard points.

The guard has played professionally in Italy, Hungary, Belgium, Puerto Rico, and Poland. She was named the Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Year in 2014 after averaging 18.6 points and 8.7 rebounds per game for James Madison.

Burkholder is the seventh-leading scorer in JMU history with 1,647 career points and ranks fourth on Dukes’ all-time list with 929 rebounds, and 291 made three-point field goals. She was a three-time All-Colonial Athletic Association selection who earned a spot on the All-CAA First Team as a junior and senior.

Savanna Collins is the Digital Media Reporter at Athletes Unlimited. You can follow her on Twitter @savannaecollins.