They may not be as intense as what he experienced against South Carolina State, but for all that he’s accomplished, the most prolific kicker in Georgia Tech history insists that the nerves never fully go away.
“If I don’t have butterflies, it doesn’t give me a good feeling going out there. I just feel like I need to be in that mindset of ‘This matters,’” Birr explained.
“Everybody on the sidelines expects points. Everybody in the stands expects points.”
Even if Aidan Birr never expected to hear from Georgia Tech in the first place.
***
Like most college kicker origin stories, Birr played soccer growing up before adding football to his repertoire in eighth grade. He initially wanted to play tight end and defensive end at Kennedale High School outside Fort Worth – he joked that he did it to rebel against the “soccer player becomes place kicker” stereotype - but when Kennedale head coach Richard Barrett asked his coaches to identify some potential kickers for the freshman team, his cover was quickly blown.
Barrett remembers standing by the goal post, watching the converted soccer goalie swing away.
“I thought, you know what? He’s going to need a little training, a little coaching, but I think this guy might have something,” he said.
Birr’s freshman season consisted mostly of kicking extra points for Kennedale’s Wing-T offense, though he does remember booting some 50-yard field goals in practice. Barrett moved him up to varsity ahead of the team’s playoff run.
Already burned out on soccer, Birr was now all-in on his new sport.
Unlike most coaches, kicking wasn’t an esoteric art to Barrett, now in his 26th season as Kennedale’s head coach and athletic director. His son, Logan, was a placekicker at UTEP and Stephen F. Austin, and he’s sent several other kickers to Division I programs over the years. To accelerate his development, he put Birr in touch with a kicking coach, Jaden Oberkrom, a former Lou Groza Award semifinalist at TCU who had signed contracts with the Jacksonville Jaguars and Cleveland Browns. During the offseason, Birr went to Kennedale’s indoor practice facility four times a week at 6 a.m. to go through self-guided kicking workouts; his parents, James and Laurie, shagged balls for him before heading to work.
Barrett usually lifted weights while Birr did his training. “I would just kind of marvel at it. I'm like, golly, look at this guy. He was very, very determined and detailed in his workouts. He knew what he wanted, and he knew how to get there,” he said.
Like most kickers, Birr set up a phone and tripod to record his kicks and analyze his mechanics. Those videos soon doubled as extra recruiting footage.
“I would do my session, and then at the end I’d be like, ‘Alright, I’m going to hit three in a row and post it on Twitter.’”
Birr had to take a more DIY approach to his recruitment. Though he attended college camps, he never competed in the private kicking camps that often serve as the basis for national rankings and give players their first major recruiting exposure. Birr instead sought out coaches on X, following and direct-messaging them and tagging them in his videos. A couple coaches followed him back, but his efforts were mostly met with indifference. Even after earning all-state honors as a junior, recruiting traction proved elusive.
“My name wasn’t really out there,” he said.
Then in January, Georgia Tech running backs coach Tashard Choice, who played four years for the Dallas Cowboys before spending the first two seasons of his coaching career at North Texas, sent Birr a direct message on X.
He can’t recall the specifics – keep it up, let me see you, something to that effect – but the note came as a complete surprise to Birr. He had never followed Choice, never tagged him in a video, never even thought Georgia Tech had heard of him. As he found out later, Choice and Barrett had known each other casually for a few years.
“They were the first school to really even hit me up, to be honest,” Birr said of Georgia Tech.
Birr attended kicking camps at Texas A&M, Texas State, Wisconsin and Georgia Tech the summer before his senior year, but he could never shake his loyalty to the school that first showed interest in him.
“It was my first time in Atlanta, first time at Georgia Tech, and I just fell in love with it – the city, the school. I felt like this program was starting to trend in the right direction,” Birr said. Georgia Tech was his first offer in late July, and he committed on the spot.
Going from commitment to enrollment wasn’t nearly as seamless.
***
Place kicking requires plenty of mental toughness. But to get to Georgia Tech, Aidan Birr also had to demonstrate an uncommon amount of pain tolerance.
A few days after his Senior Night, he came down with appendicitis. He underwent an appendectomy, spent two weeks in the hospital, lost 30 pounds and missed his team’s playoff run. He regained the weight, but in the spring, he was playing pickup basketball with friends when he tore the ACL in his right knee.
Remarkably, he didn’t know he had torn it until a month later.
“I took a week off and then I started lifting again, doing power clean, squatting, and then kicking. (My knee) would only buckle on me if I did a kickoff. That's when I knew I had to go get an MRI,” Birr said. He was relieved to learn that Georgia Tech would still honor his scholarship.
Birr redshirted his freshman year as he rehabbed – it sounds counterintuitive, but he preferred that the injury happened to his kicking leg. Tearing the ACL in his plant leg, he said, would have made for a tougher recovery. Georgia Tech’s coaches initially didn’t plan on letting him kick in spring practice, but due to a lack of available specialists, they agreed to give him a shot.
“When he started back kicking, he was ahead of schedule on the ACL repair. He’s booting that thing. I’m like ‘Holy cow, he’s still recovering from ACL (surgery)?’” Key recalled.
When he jogged onto the field for his first field goal attempt against South Carolina State, Birr admitted that the ACL tear still lingered in the back of his mind. Would everything feel the same as before? Would his leg still have the same strength and power when it mattered? His 42-yarder in the fourth quarter, he said, was when he truly felt like he was back.
“I knew my ACL was strong, but I just didn’t have that comfort kicking again. Something just felt off. Once I got in the game, it felt fine. I hit a good ball and I was like, okay, I have the confidence again,” he remembered.
Birr finished the 2023 season making 17-of-19 attempts, helping Tech become bowl-eligible for the first time in five years. He began the 2024 season memorably, drilling a 44-yard walk-off field goal against No. 10 Florida State in Dublin, Ireland, but some unexpected struggles followed. Birr only made five of his next 10 attempts, though he steadied himself down the stretch and booted three field goals from 40-plus yards in a blustery win over N.C. State at Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field.
