Get to know Emily Adams, our new South Carolina athletics reporter

Growing up in family of Penn State alumni, I was raised on Power 5 football. Every year we made the pilgrimage from my hometown in the Philadelphia suburbs to Happy Valley, and sitting in the stands during a White Out was one of the first moments that made me a sports fan.

However, it was the 2008 Olympics that solidified my lifelong passion for sports. Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin's battle in the gymnastics individual all-around is the first time I remember seeing women's sports on TV.

I was glued to the screen for all three weeks of the Beijing Games. I was just 8 years old at the time, but I vividly recall the USWNT toppling Brazil in the gold medal match, the American women's 4x400-meter relay victory over Jamaica, and USA women's basketball's dominance — partly thanks to assistant coach Dawn Staley.

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It's been a long time since I was immersed in the world of big time college sports — and I think that's a good thing. I earned my journalism degree from Ithaca College, a small Division III school in upstate New York, and spent the last year covering high school sports in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Those experiences gave me something far more valuable than knowledge of stats and schemes. They gave me a perspective that many sports journalists don't have.

Covering Division III athletics and Knoxville preps didn't come with the same prominence of my new SEC beat, but it did have advantages. I had broad access to athletes and coaches, which made it easy to form relationships and to find the compelling human stories that I'm passionate about writing. 

That access also made it easy to notice the flaws within sports — lack of access to mental healthcare, obstacles to participation for LGBTQ+ athletes, failures in Title IX compliance, to name a few.

College athletics are imperfect in many ways, and part of my job is to tell those stories, to bring attention to issues and inequalities. However, they are also full of joy, passion and relationships that can't be found anywhere else in sports.

Covering South Carolina with a focus on women's basketball and football gives me a special opportunity to bring my community-focused reporting style to nationally recognized programs.  

I'm excited to explore a football team on the rise, a remarkable women's basketball program, and the culture that makes USC unique. I'm excited to produce the kind of women's sports coverage I never saw as a kid and to live out a childhood dream of spending my days in an SEC football stadium. 

 Most of all, I'm excited to get to know the Gamecock community, so don't hesitate to drop me a line at eaadams@gannett.com with questions, story ideas or restaurant recommendations! I'm also on Twitter @eaadams6 — but don't be surprised when I interrupt your South Carolina coverage to tweet furiously about the Philadelphia Eagles every Sunday.

Contact Emily Adams at eaadams@gannett.com or on Twitter @eaadams6.