After Monday's Clark Atlanta University Commencement ceremony at CAU Panthers Stadium, graduating senior
Janae Adams won't have much time to celebrate being a newly minted alumna.
Adams, a centerfielder on the Lady Panthers softball team, will start a job at Major League Baseball's MLB Network in Secaucus, N.J., in a couple of weeks. She's also heading to Oklahoma City for the Women's Softball College World Series in early June.
She is one of the 35 Panthers and Lady Panthers graduating seniors who will be receiving their diplomas during Commencement Monday.
In a year where the cumulative grade point average for all of the CAU Lady Panthers/Panthers 11 athletic teams (including cheerleading) was 2.99 by fall 2018 (the cumulative Spring 2018 GPA is still being tabulated), each program has at least one member graduating Monday.
That includes Adams, the CAU Athletics Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Adams has only been at Clark Atlanta for two years after transferring from Alabama A&M. She went to A&M to play softball, but to also study journalism.
"I always wanted to be in sports journalism since like the eighth grade," Adams said. "I wanted to be a sideline reporter at that time, Over the years, it's kind of changed. I wanted to be a reporter, but then I wanted to be a writer, and now I want to be a producer behind the scenes."
But she wasn't happy with the program at A&M and decided to transfer to Clark Atlanta, where the communications program was strong and it's in the big journalism town of Atlanta, she said.
Adams has thrived at CAU, where she didn't play softball her junior year so she could focus on her studies and finding journalism internships.
A sports journalism instructor advised her to apply for the prestigious Rhoden Fellows program that was started by esteemed writer Bill Rhoden, editor-at-large of ESPN property, The Undefeated. The program trains students from historically black colleges and universities for sports journalism careers.
Adams got the internship.
"It's been great," she said. "We have a weekly podcast that we do. We attend different major sporting events, so I did the Super Bowl. I was really behind the scenes, like I was in the locker room two days before the game. I also did the Celebration Bowl and did social media for that. So it's different things. My next assignment is the Women's Softball World Series."
Along with being a Rhoden Fellow, Adams has also done an internship at Turner Sports.
She also played softball again this season, having a solid season as a centerfielder and contributing 12 hits, six RBIs, two home runs, a triple and a double. Adams also stole 19-of-22 bases for the Lady Panthers.
"Coach [Lawanda] Pearson convinced me that I could deal with balancing things with my internship," Adams said. "I didn't think I was going to play that well, honestly. I had low expectations, considering I hadn't played since my sophomore year. I didn't even throw a ball. So, I was really surprised."
Now that she is getting her degree, Adams' focus will now turn to her job with MLB Network where she will be a broadcast associate. She hopes her future includes becoming a producer, maybe of a show like ESPN's 'First Take' and creating content that tells the athletes' stories.
She cherishes her time at Clark Atlanta.
"I haven't had the full Clark Atlanta experience like other students," Adams said. "But our department is really great as the professors have all done what you want to do. But I think the main thing has been the motto – 'Find A Way or Make One.'"
