“To win in field hockey takes grit, finesse and creativity.”

So says Alayna Burns, a rising senior forward on the Duke University field hockey team and a recent addition to the EcoAthletes Champions roster. She has already demonstrated all three in her early days as part of the #ClimateComeback. We will get to the EcoAthletes portion of the story in a bit but first, let’s dig into her childhood in Medford, New Jersey, about 20 miles east of Philadelphia, to learn how those qualities would become engrained in Burns.

“I started playing field hockey in third grade and fell in love with it right away,” she related. “I played softball too, but soon I knew that it was field hockey for me. And that I basically grew up playing with the same kids — the ‘Medford Field Hockey Girls’ — from childhood through high school made the experience so much richer.”

Burns melded skills developed from softball — patience, strategic savvy, and more — with the quickness, strength, speed, endurance, and technical aptitude required in field hockey to become a star player. Oh yeah, there was that triumvirate of grit, finesse, and creativity.

“A grinder from the get-go, I was known as a little bit of a crazy girl in town when it came to sports and school” offered Burns. “I set goals for myself at every level as a kid. On the field, I’d outwork people for loose balls. I was just so focused and driven to win. Basically, it was my determination to be the fittest, work the hardest to make plays, and my coachability, along with the consistent support of my parents and my club coach Kristina Foster, that made me the player I am today.”

Coach Foster, who mentored Burns from 8th grade through high school, is a legend in South Jersey field hockey circles, leading various teams to national championship tournaments. A grinder herself, Foster pushed Burns and her mentee ate it up. Both parents supported Burns’ athletic pursuits, which eventually included playing Division I field hockey, with her dad Paul taking it to the next level.

“Once I told him that I wanted to chase my D-I dreams, he developed the plan for my recruitment, starting my freshman year of high school, and then put it into action,” Burns recalled. “Producing highlight videos, finding showcases and camps for me. I wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much interest otherwise. One of those showcases was the Duke spring camp. I remember being in the dugout during a high school softball game, and dad said, ‘I hate to have you leave a game early, but we have to go now to catch our flight’. I hated to go too — it was against my ethos — but it gave Duke a chance to really see me.”

Burns had no way of knowing that she was walking into a program in transition. Duke was ranked #4 in the country when she committed but things started to go south soon after that.

“COVID hit in 2020, paving the way for a unique freshmen year with two seasons that didn’t really count in both the fall and spring,” she noted. “My sophomore season was tough as the team just didn’t gel. As a junior last fall, we did a bit better, getting to #25 in the rankings despite not having any ACC wins, but we really didn’t have what it took. I’d been used to winning since I started playing, so this was a new type of challenge for me. I had to find different types of wins, including developing an identity for Duke field hockey. It’s been a struggle, but I am determined to help us get that identity this coming fall and leave the program in a positive place.”

She also has been committed to leaving the planet in a positive place for some time.

“I always loved the ocean and as I learned more about climate change in middle school, I became more and more concerned and more determined to do something about it,” asserted Burns. “In high school, I became known as a ‘Climate Guru’. I helped host Water Week, which focused on raising awareness of the water crisis. We led a Water Walk, solicited sponsors, and raised over $1,200 for charity:water. I liked that we were taking action on climate change, but I knew that we need to do much, much more to save the world from climate disaster so that’s what I set out to do when I got to Duke.”

As a freshman, Burns helped promote Scoop, the first zero-waste food shop at Duke. Working closely with local nonproft Don’t Waste Durham, she helped create opportunities for students to gain experience with sustainable businesses. And she volunteered on annual campus waste audits run by Environmental Alliance at Duke.

Burns then turned her environmental activism to sports by helping to launch Duke’s Sustainable Student Athletes organization this spring. Their first initiative, the Devils Doing Good Shoe Drive, collected 591 shoes this past spring for both recycling and donation. Burns sees this as just the beginning of lasting change in Duke athletics.

In the classroom, the rising senior is on her way to completing a powerful academic combination: An economics major, a minor in environmental science and policy, and a certificate in sustainability engagement.

Becoming an EcoAthletes Champion was for Burns a logical next step on her climate impact journey.

“When I first heard about the organization from EcoAthletes Champion and former University of Virginia discus thrower Sadey Rodriguez, I got really excited,” Burns exclaimed. “EcoAthletes is showing me how I can use my platform as a Duke field hockey player to make a really big difference by inspiring other student-athletes and our followers to take climate action.” 

Burns began making a difference within a nanosecond of becoming a Champion this January by taking a leading role in the inaugural EcoAthletes Collegiate Cup, a three-month competition between the 13 universities that had at least one Champion.

The game went like this:  workouts — running steps, cycling pedal strokes, and more — would be tracked via an app from Climategames, an innovative British startup. Those actions were then converted into an environmental currency that was used to fund active carbon removal projects. The Champions on each campus engaged their fellow student-athletes, friends, and family to sign up and workout. The school that, on aggregate, worked out the most and thus removed the most carbon from the atmosphere would win the Cup.

“Alayna, our first Champion from Duke, joined the Champions network in late January, and she was grinding from the get-go,” recalled EcoAthletes founder and CEO Lew Blaustein. “She started the day after the Collegiate Cup kicked off and so it was too late to add a new school. When I told her, you could see the disappointment etched on her face. Almost immediately, it was like a switch flipped and the proverbial LED light bulb went on above her head. She told me, ‘Duke is going to team up with one of the existing schools’.”

A few days later, the combined Stanford-Duke Collegiate Cup squad was born.

Working with Stanford golfer and EcoAthletes Champion Rebecca Becht, Burns went into high gear, leading the production of a video involving student-athletes from both schools to help recruit people to sign up for the Collegiate Cup. Despite the delayed start, the Stanford-Duke squad came from way behind to finish in 2nd place, thanks in large part to Burns’ — you guessed it — grit, finesse, and creativity.

What will she do for an encore, beyond perhaps leading Duke to earn the 2024 EcoAthletes Collegiate Cup?

“In high school, I asked myself what I could do to bring the most value to the world,” Burns shared. “My dad is a business leader in healthcare and so I always thought, ‘I want to be a CEO.’ Over the years I’ve asked myself, isn’t business creating a lot of our climate problems? That is of course true. But it is also true that business is playing a big part in leading climate solutions, it’s just not doing so fast enough or at scale — yet. So, I want to lead a climate solutions business, potentially in sports. Because, as Nelson Mandela said, ‘sport has the power to change the world.’”

You can follow Alayna on Instagram and Twitter