• Native of Kingsport, TN
• Played Varsity basketball all four years at Sullivan South High School
• Sophomore Year: All Conference 2nd Team
• Junior Year: All Conference 1st Team
• Senior Year: Sprint Scholar Athlete, All Conference 1st Team, All District 1st Team, All Region 1st
• Help lead her AAU organization the Tri-Cities Shooting Stars to Substate Tournament
•  Experience as varsity Assistant Coach and JV Head Coach at Falcon High School in Colorado Springs, CO
• Experience as Assistant Coach for Montgomery County High School in Clarksville, TN
• Coached VABA for three years including 4th /5th grade Bruins

Ashley Burney was born in Kingsport, Tennessee where she fell in love with basketball at a very early age. She began playing in a recreation league very similar to what VABA does at the age of 5. Like most girls playing basketball growing up in east Tennessee, she loved Pat Summitt and the Tennessee Lady Vols. Around fourth grade, she realized this was something she loved and began playing AAU basketball for the Tri-Cities Shooting Stars putting in the extra time and work to get better every day. During
middle school, she continued to grow as a basketball player but also was a four-sport athlete playing volleyball, cross-country, basketball, and track. When she reached high school, she decided to turn all her focus to basketball making the varsity team as a freshman. Throughout her career, Ashley was All Conference three years in a row and her senior year was also All District and All Region. Ashley was also nominated and voted as a Sprint Scholar Athlete during her senior year holding a GPA of over 4.0 during
her high school career. During the off season, she continued to play AAU basketball for the Shooting Stars where they competed in tournaments across the southeast region of the United States. She was offered several athletic basketball scholarship opportunities but decided to pursue academics due to several chronic knee injuries. 

Ashley attended the University of Tennessee Knoxville where she majored in Biochemistry Cellular and Molecular Biology and then went on to receive her master’s degree from Carson-Newman University in Teaching in hopes of pursing her dream of coaching at the high school level. To Ashley, basketball, and sports, is more than just playing the game. Her coaching philosophy is “it is about investing time to develop these athletes not just as basketball players but as outstanding young adults, molding them and teaching them that life is more than just a game of basketball.” About this time, she met her now husband who was a 2nd Lieutenant in the United States Army. They moved to Colorado Springs for their first duty station where Ashley was hired at Falcon High School as the Assistant Varsity Volleyball and
Basketball coach as well as the head JV coach for basketball. Ashley coached at Falcon for two years helping lead the girls’ basketball team to the sweet sixteen and elite 8 appearances in the Colorado state tournaments. After Colorado, the army moved Ashley to Fort Campbell, KY where Ashley took an assistant coaching job at Montgomery County High School in Clarksville, TN. It was after this job that Ashley’s oldest daughter Leah became old enough to start playing basketball herself and she decided to
step away from high school coaching to coach her daughter.

Ashley moved to Charlottesville in 2017 again as a military duty station. Her and her family loved it so much that her husband and now four children decided to make Ruckersville, VA their permanent home. Her daughter Leah began playing VABA during the Polar Bear League in 2020. Ashley absolutely loved
everything about VABA and its values and mission that the next season she began coaching. She has coached VABA for three years total now including the 5/6th grade girls’ Bruins team. “VABA basketball really spoke to me because it is built on Christian values, and it is about shaping youth as a person not just a basketball player. We are teaching kids about kindness, competitiveness, discipline, and respect from a young age. For me, that is what coaching is all about and I’m excited to be a part of this amazing
program.”