In a morning filled with motivation and community spirit, FOX Sports veteran reporter Erin Andrews took center stage on March 6 as the keynote speaker at the YMCA of South Palm Beach County’s annual Inspiration Breakfast.
“When I think of the YMCA, I think of my family and our community. I think of my high school. I was just talking to my dad about it…I said, ‘Dad, what do we do there?’ And he said, ‘Well, you attempted to take tumbling there,’ to try to make my high school cheerleading squad. I just remember everyone from our town getting together there, everyone that I would go to dance with or go to school with or see around, would just be there. It was like such a place where you always knew like, hey, there’s so-and-so from down the street. It was just… it’s home, it’s community,” said Andrews.
Andrews, an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster who started her career at FOX Sports Florida and the Sunshine Network, spent eight years at ESPN before joining the FOX Sports A-Team. She now covers the NFL’s top game each week.
“I love talking sports. I love being around athletes. It’s where my passion is,” said Andrews.
With comfort, humor and honesty, Andrews covered many subjects throughout the event including her career highs and lows, childhood YMCA memories, student TV experiences at the University of Florida, her favorite interview subjects and mentors, women in sports broadcasting today, beating cancer, motherhood, her IVF journey, surrogacy and marriage. She discussed the podcast she launched in 2021 with co-host and fellow FOX Sports colleague Charissa Thompson titled “Calm Down with Erin and Charissa” and her women’s NFL, MLB, NHL and NCAA apparel line, WEAR by Erin Andrews—a line even supported in season by Taylor Swift.
While Swift is no doubt strengthening the morale and spirits of girls and young women across America through her music, the same could be said for Erin Andrews through her sports reporting. She is among many female sports broadcasters changing the game and how it’s covered.
“It’s becoming a norm on the sidelines in terms of [female] coaches and trainers and general managers and assistant general managers and executives and front offices. Do we have a long way to go? Absolutely. But the one thing I’m super proud of in the NFL and especially on television and on the field is that we’re making strides. Yes, there does need to be improvement all over the place, but where don’t we all—men and women—need improvement? We’re getting there and players are receptive. Coaches are receptive and it’s great,” said Andrews.
More than $500,000 was raised thanks to Andrews and the hundreds of supporters in attendance. Proceeds from the YMCA of South Palm Beach County Inspiration Breakfast help fund scholarships for individuals and families to participate in Y programs and will specifically help send local children to summer camp.
“It’s so important as you start to grow up, as you start to understand what responsibility is, as you start to understand the tools that you need to thrive out of college and in the workforce. It molds you as a person, all these little things. You don’t realize how important those things are until you’re out in the workforce and you’re out in the real world and you’re like, ‘Wow, those are tools I needed for socialization and to help with my competitiveness, with how hard I work, the responsibility I take on and so forth,” said Andrews.
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