I was sitting in the living room at my parents’ house in my tiny hometown of Weirsdale, Fla. when Auburn’s Chris Davis collected Alabama kicker Adam Griffith’s 57-yard miss in 2013, running it all the way back for the ‘Kick Six’.

My stepmother, who admittedly is an Alabama fan, hurled every expletive in her vocabulary at the television that night (I hope she forgives me for throwing her under the bus here).

Nonetheless, it was one of those moments where you’ll never forget where you were or what you were doing — and that’s coming from someone who didn’t even have a dog in the fight. It was also one of those moments that couldn’t help but make you fall in love with college sports.

But truth be told, my love for college sports came well before Davis’ 109-yard scamper.

Growing up in a tiny town in North Central Florida, I pledged allegiance to a team wearing a different shade of orange and blue. A team that littered my childhood with some of the highest of highs as the likes of Urban Meyer and Tim Tebow wreaked havoc on college football.

I now know I shouldn’t have set any kind of standard then, as I’ve been sorely disappointed ever since. However, the glory days of the Gators did serve me well as they ignited my passion for not just college football, but college sports and all the tradition that exists within.

Those who knew me growing up might tell you that passion was taken to extremes as I joined the local tackle football league in sixth grade and was the only girl in the entire league. Just to offer some additional context, I currently stand 5-foot-2 as a full grown, 25-year-old woman.

I might’ve looked like an out-of-place bobblehead with a football helmet on, but I assure you I felt at home talking about flea flickers, jet sweeps and safety blitzes.

Unfortunately, my tackle football career was short-lived. As my teammates grew bigger and stronger, I plateaued.

Instead, I took on a new role on the sideline: glorified water girl. If there were a job description for that role, it might read: “A water girl who will tell players to ‘bounce that run outside the next time the defensive end comes crashing in like that’ and whose father is an assistant coach.”

I lived to be standing on the sidelines of football fields. And as I grew older, I set out to figure out how I could do it for a living. My first idea was sports medicine. However, I quickly learned that the “medicine” part heavily outweighs the “sports” part.

Then I got into the media side of things.

It started in 2018 as I freelanced for my hometown paper reporting on local high school games.

Glamorous? Not at first. But I was on the sideline.

Then, like anything else, with a lot of practice, I started getting the hang of it. And let me tell you, it’s a lot easier to enjoy doing something when you’re good at it versus when you’re not and you forget to report the final score of the first game you ever cover.

Needless to say, I’ve come a long way.

As I arrive at Auburn, I come with a bachelor’s degree in journalism and communications from the University of Florida. I also bring with me four years of experience reporting on an SEC beat as I covered the Gators all through college as well as the last two years with Gainesville’s local newspaper, The Gainesville Sun, where I also continued my preps sports coverage.

I always told myself it would take the perfect storm for me to leave my post in Gainesville, which is a city that my family and I have quite the affinity for.

I lost my football-fanatic-of-a-mother in March of this year. When I got into this industry, she always joked that I couldn’t leave reporting on Florida sports unless it was to cover another team in the SEC.

Little did she know, I’d one day have an opportunity to cover one of the most tradition-rich athletic programs in the SEC for an award-winning media outlet like AL.com.

I just hope she’s half as excited as I am.