Meet Cait Kemp, the new sports reporter at The Gardner News
Hello to The Gardner News readers! My name is Cait Kemp and I am the new sports reporter for The Gardner News. I am so excited to start this position and get to know this community.
I am a 2023 graduate of Springfield College, where I pursued a degree in communications/sports journalism. I was involved in campus media and served as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Springfield Student newspaper my senior year. I completed a two-year internship for MassLive, where I covered a variety of high school sports in Western Mass.
After growing up in Leicester and playing field hockey, basketball and softball for Leicester High School, I went on to play field hockey at the collegiate level as well, so I am very involved in and passionate about the sports world.
My passion is storytelling. I love to watch sports – for their level of competition and the excitement behind something that is unpredictable. However, what I enjoy even more is finding the deeper stories within athletics. I cannot wait to get started on telling the stories of this community!
During my internship at MassLive, I had the opportunity to follow some great teams and programs. I covered Longmeadow field hockey’s state championship run, as well as Agawam boys volleyball and its journey to the state title. Along with some impressive wins came some heartfelt stories.
For example, not only did Longmeadow win the championship, but did so in head coach Ann Simons’ last season. The kicker was that throughout her amazing career, she had never led the team to a finals victory. It was a storybook ending that season, and I was honored to be a part of it. The relationship of that team was even more special than their athletic skills, and that is why I chose to pursue sports journalism – to capture these special moments. I hope to continue that here for The Gardner News, sharing the important memories in these young athletes’ lives.
I also love social media and hope to connect with readers through different platforms in order to create a relationship to give the community the best work that I can. I know John Ballou covered this community so well in his time and I hope to build on the great coverage he provided this region.
Thank you to the readers, and I can’t wait for you to come on this journey with me!
Contact Cait Kemp at ckemp@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @caitlinkemp09.
This article originally appeared on Gardner News: Cait Kemp is joining the Gardner News as a sports reporter
