Lee Chadbourne Burling was a 1954 graduate of Boston University's Sargent College.
Burling excelled in several sports while attending Boston University. She was a member of Sargent College's volleyball, basketball and fistball teams. She was also a stand-out tennis, badminton, field hockey and lacrosse player.
In basketball, Burling played for Hall of Famer Lindy Saragosa and was a member of the two-time Connecticut AAU championship team.
A native of Manchester, New Hampshire, Burling began playing field hockey her freshman year at BU. She was a member of the Northeast and Southeast Sectional teams from 1952-59 and a U.S. Reserve player in 1955. In 1958, she started a two-year stint as a right wing on the U.S. National team that toured South Africa.
Burling won the Massachusetts State Badminton Championship in 1952 and the Eastern Open Championship in 1953. In 1954, she teamed with Margaret Varner and was runner-up in the Montreal Championships. Both women got to the finals of every doubles tournament on the East Coast that year only to finish second each time. As a singles player, Burling lost to Varner in the semifinals of the national badminton tournament and gained a national ranking of fourth.
Taking up lacrosse in 1951, Burling made the U.S. team in 1954 thanks to the coaching of Gretchen Schuyler, also a Hall of Fame member, among others. She made the U.S. squad from 1954-60 and in 1957, as a member of the Reserve team, she toured the British Isles.
Burling and Vera Dwight won the 1952 All-College Doubles Tennis Tournament at Longwood. She didn't really compete seriously in the sport until she was 40, when she played pro-tennis at Syracuse, NY. Her success carried over in the tennis courts, however, as she entered the Senior Women's circuit and competed in the National Grass Court Championships and Forest Hills and the National Clay Court Championships in Housgon. In 1978, she was ranked second in the 45 doubles. The following year she was ranked third in the east by the E.T.A. in the 40 singles and ninth nationally.
In 1968, Burling took up squash at the age of 36 and was a member of the top ten the next six years. In 1971, she was ranked third in the country.
