Andy Quinn isn’t your typical Boston College freshman. At 20, he’s a couple of years older than most of his first-year classmates and he hails from Galway on the west coast of Ireland, where he spent his teenage years tending to the cows for his dad’s beef farm or milking them at his neighbor’s farm next door. 

And when he wasn’t studying his lessons, he was playing rugby and Gaelic football.

These days, he’s kicking the pigskin for Coach Bill O’Brien and BC’s Eagles, who hope to square their 1-2 record when they host the University of California at Berkeley in Alumni Stadium this Saturday afternoon.

The circuitous route that Quinn took to the playing fields at Boston College can be traced back to Dublin’s Aviva Stadium and the “Aer Lingus College Football Classic” in August 2022. Northwestern beat Nebraska that day, but it was the presence of 17-year-old Andy Quinn who drew the attention of NFL and college scouts in attendance.

Earlier that summer, Quinn had stumbled on a Facebook advertisement for “Ireland’s King Kicking Competition,” and after years of rugby play, he decided to enter the contest. His impressive play in the first round of the competition in Galway’s Dangan Park punched his ticket for the big show in Dublin.

“At halftime,” he said, “they were bringing three people from the stands out into the middle of the field in front of 50,000 people. If you kicked two balls over from 45 yards and 50 yards, you won flights to America and you got to visit Northwestern. I slotted over a 45-yard field goal and a 50-yard field goal and won the prize.” 

Quinn had excelled at a rugby while playing for Blackrock College, an all-boys Catholic secondary school in Dublin. But he says he only started taking the sport— and kicking— seriously in 2021.

“My youngest brother had to go through chemotherapy; he had a form of leukemia,” said Andy, the eldest of four Quinn brothers. “When he was five, my mum and he had to go across to England to get chemotherapy treatment. That was when my kicking of rugby balls really escalated.

“I used to be out on the field from like 11 until 5. My dad used to just drop me off, and I’d be at the rugby field kicking for four or five hours straight.” 

Quinn credits that intense practice regimen for his King Kicking title, but adds, “I thought that was sort of it with me and American football.” 

Not so fast.

His big boots in the King Kicking competition also caught the attention of representatives from the NFL Academy in the English town of Loughborough.

“The NFL Academy saw what I did on Twitter, and they offered me a trial,” Quinn told The Reporter.  “I dropped out of mainstream school, and for my senior year of high school, I homeschooled myself in England.

“I had no offers coming into April of my senior year, and I had to take things into my own hands, so I came to America and went to Kohl's Kicking Camp. It was in Philadelphia, and they ranked me as the 30th-best punter and the 31st-best field goal kicking recruit for the class of 2025 out of that camp.

“I was happy with that, and they said come back and come down to Tennessee later in the summer.” 

When Quinn returned to the US in July, he didn’t just show up, he dominated the camp at the Rocky Top complex in Tennessee.

“They changed my ranking from the 30th-best punter to the 4th-best in the country. And then for field goals, I went from 31st to the 12th best in the country,” said Quinn. “From there, I got recruited by a lot of different schools.” 

But, all along, it was the Jesuit college in Chestnut Hill that appealed most to him. He had to wait to commit until he received the results of his Leaving Certificate, Ireland’s final secondary school exam.

“I was one of the last people to commit in my class,” Quinn said. “Part of the reason why I was offered so late was because of the Leaving Certificate; we don’t get the results until the first day of September.” 

After passing the exam, Quinn was offered a full scholarship to play D-1 football at Boston College, and he officially committed last October. 

Instead of waiting until this past summer fall to ship up to Boston, he joined the team last December. Arriving in Chestnut Hill in the middle of the year allowed him to kick start his education in the off-season and practice with the team without losing any NCAA eligibility.

Quinn travelled with the Eagles to New York City for the 2024 Bad Boy Mowers Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium. Though he didn’t play, he got a taste of what a collegiate football game day was like when BC faced off against Nebraska.

After training this year through the summer, spring, Quinn, now in his second semester of freshman year studying finance, finally got to take the field for the maroon and gold. 

“When I got the opportunity to play in my first game against Fordham, I was just thinking out in the field that I need to relish this opportunity and show everyone in the stands what I can do,” he said.

“I use everyone in the stands as a reason to perform better rather than let the pressure get to me.” 

Unlike most freshmen, he has the experience of kicking in front of large crowds, and he uses that to his advantage. 

As Coach O’Brien told reporters last season: “Andy’s a guy that really, at a young age, punted in a punting/kicking competition in front of 50,000 people outside of Dublin. He has the poise, the demeanor, the ability to be a punter for us, and also he's a kicker.” 

He added: “I definitely think there is a little bit of a pipeline that can be set up over there. I think American football, because of what the NFL has done over there, has taken shape. We take a lot of pride in Andy Quinn coming to BC.” 

Quinn is proud, too, and has already found a home away from home in Boston. 

“I spent a year in England. I say to everyone, the transition from Ireland to England, even though it's such a small distance away compared to Boston, is such a bigger difference than going from Ireland to Boston.

“It's just the community.  The culture around the place is very similar. Downtown Boston is quite similar to Dublin, and the people sort of have the same outlook on life.” 

He has also connected with fellow Irish students and professors on campus and learned that his great-grandmother, who emigrated to Boston in the 1930s, used to attend Mass each Sunday at BC’s St. Ignatius church.

“The Irish community has reached out a lot from within BC,” he said. “You don’t really have to look for it, which is really nice.”

While a lot has changed for this 20-year-old athlete in just a few years, he's more focused on short-term goals. Right now, that's beating California on Saturday. 

“When I was 18, I never imagined this is where I would be,” said Quinn, whose playing time to date has been limited to kicking off against Fordham and Stanford.

“I’m not looking too far into the future. Just thinking one kick at a time and trying to get the best out of myself from each kick and taking it from there.”