As early as sixth grade, Miami WBB guard Ahnay Adams remembers having to stand up for herself.
Adams’ father was incarcerated until she was five, her mother dealt with aspects of substance abuse and she even lost a childhood friend to gun violence and was shot at herself.
“My household was very toxic, my dad was in the gang life,” Adams said with a pause. “My mom, she was also a little bit involved too.”
Adams lived on 5 Morgan Terrace, a “straight shot” from Monte’s Park, a known gang area that shaped her “rough” upbringing in New Bedford, Mass.
Despite struggles at home and across her community, Adams didn’t shy away from creating her own path.
“The situation that we were in at home wasn’t normal,” Adams said. “I told [mom], ‘You can either continue to be in this situation with my dad and continue to go through life like this, or we can move on … and do what’s best for us.’”
With so much pressure on her shoulders at a young age, she found an escape playing sports, specifically basketball.
She never imagined basketball would take her out of New Bedford; she simply thought it was a distraction from her “parents beating on and verbally abusing one another.”
“Ahnay sacrificed a lot of her childhood,” Adams’ mother Taysha Gordon said. “She chose to put all of her energy into mastering basketball.”
Her skill in the sport was more than an escape, and her talents caught the eye of some of the top high school prep schools in the Northeast.
One of those recruiters was Tara Brisson, the head coach of Tilton’s women’s basketball program, a boarding school nestled in central New Hampshire.
Adams affectionately referred to the area as the “boonies.”
“[Ahnay] knew she had to get out of New Bedford if things were going to change for her,” Brisson said. “She was taking a chance on Tilton school, on Northern New Hampshire, on me.”
Adams took that chance, trading New Bedford’s concrete coastline for the Victorian-style boarding school as she searched for a bigger purpose in her life — one she found.
“[Tilton] changed the way Ahnay viewed the world,” Gordon said.
At Tilton, Adams took the basketball scene by storm, leading the school to three Lakes Region championships and earning New Hampshire’s Gatorade Player of the Year three times.
Adams did it all while rocking her trademark No. 5, holding onto her roots at 5 Morgan Terrace with every step on the court.
“Carrying number five with me is a symbolization of where I come from and how much I’ve gone through,” Adams said.
Her childhood friend, Johan, who Adams met at the local Boys & Girls club, noted how relentless she was in her pursuit of greatness.
The pair came from similar tumultuous childhoods and pushed one another on the court daily — so much so that Johan noted Adams was the only person he had to beg for a rest day.
“You could throw a brick at her face and she’d use it to get better,” Johan said
That’s the legacy Adams leaves everywhere she goes, and now, at UM, the junior continues to set the pace.
The only player remaining from Tricia Cullop’s inaugural season at UM in 2024-25, Adams had her work cut out for her in establishing a new culture at Miami, having to set the tone from scratch as a captain.
“They might not like what I have to say, but at the end of the day, they know it’s coming from a place of me being genuine,” Adams said.
Her constant need to be “real” stems from her path to Miami.
She couldn’t afford to be coddled. She always had a laser focus on winning, not just on the court, but in life.
Playing like her hair is on fire, carrying a legacy and a community with her, and always leading and rocking her hometown five.
