‘More than a coach’s wife’: Emily Beamer wins SC football humanitarian award
Last month, South Carolina football coach Shane Beamer came home from work and started telling his wife, Emily, about the South Carolina Football Hall of Fame’s humanitarian award.
The award, Shane Beamer said as he read off its criteria, goes to an individual who makes a “meaningful impact” on the state and embodies leadership, service and commitment. And Emily Beamer knew this year’s award winner very, very well.
“Guess who’s getting it,” Shane said.
“You?” Emily said.
“No,” Shane said, laughing. “You.”
That surprising reveal became reality Thursday night in Greenville, as Emily Beamer accepted the SC Football Hall of Fame’s 2025 Humanitarian of the Year award.
Her husband, who enters his sixth season as South Carolina’s football coach, and her parents attended the ceremony at Hotel Hartness, where Emily was formally recognized for her charity work through the Beamer Family Foundation.
Emily Beamer’s work at the Beamer Family Foundation
The Columbia-based non-profit, spearheaded by Emily Beamer, works primarily with the Richland 2 School District to provide backpacks, books and mentorship opportunities at Title 1 elementary schools, which receive federal funding to support students from low-income households.
Emily Beamer also serves on the board of Prisma Health Children’s Hospital-Midlands in Columbia as a community volunteer, and she and her husband’s foundation is a top sponsor of the University of South Carolina Dance Marathon, the state’s largest student-led philanthropic organization.
South Carolina Football Hall of Fame board chairman and president David Wyatt said Emily’s résumé made her a strong choice. She is the organization’s 12th all-time Humanitarian of the Year honoree and the third woman to win the award.
“She’s more than a coach’s wife,” Wyatt said. “She’s really gotten involved, rolled up her sleeves in the community and used her influence in a major way. And that’s what we’re all about.”
Emily Beamer: ‘Very important’ to give back
Although Emily Beamer was familiar with South Carolina from the family’s previous stint at the school – Shane was an assistant under Steve Spurrier from 2007-10 – her charity work began in earnest in 2020, when Shane was hired as USC’s next head coach from Oklahoma.
The Beamers have three children: Daughters Sutton and Olivia, both of whom were born in Columbia, and son Hunter, a constant presence at USC football games and other events with his dad.
“Shane and I feel very blessed that we’re in this position to be able to give back,” Emily said Thursday. “So it was very important to us to be able to do that and find some type of outlet.”
Emily’s love for her own children is a driving factor in her charity work, she said.
“Really anybody that comes to us, I hope I can say yes,” she said. “And I’m honored that I am, when I can.”
Shane and Emily Beamer first met in a press box elevator at a Mississippi State football game in 2004, when he was an assistant coach for Sylvester Croom and she was interning for the school’s sports information department. They’ll celebrate 20 years of marriage in June.
Shane Beamer said his wife is a “rock star.”
“What she does at home, managing and dealing with me and our three children and everything they have going on … I’m extremely blessed to have her in my life because of what she does,” he said earlier this week. “She makes so many sacrifices that allow me to do what I love to do.”
The first lady of Gamecock football
Emily is also popular in her role as the “First Lady of Gamecock Football,” as the team has dubbed her. In 2024, the entire roster joined Shane in serenading Emily with a locker-room rendition of Fantasia’s “When I See U” as an early birthday present after a big home win against Texas A&M.
Emily also bakes chocolate chip cookies for the South Carolina football office on Thursdays, a tradition that dates back years to Shane’s time at Virginia Tech and Oklahoma and went viral last August after it was prominently featured on an episode of Netflix’s docuseries “SEC Football: Any Given Saturday.”
“It’s my second favorite job,” she joked of being an honorary team mom to South Carolina’s 100-plus football players. “We love those kids. ... We love to get invited to weddings and baby showers and follow them through their whole journey.”
Emily Beamer was one of two individuals with Gamecocks connections honored Thursday at the South Carolina Football Hall of Fame’s annual ceremony. Former USC quarterback Todd Ellis, the school’s all-time leading passer and longtime radio play-by-play broadcaster, was inducted into the hall of fame.
Emily Beamer gave a speech and received a plaque at the ceremony. Speaking beforehand, she said was “very surprised” when her husband broke the news to her last month that she’d won the award, but she was happy to receive it.
“I thought he was saying he was going to get it,” she said, laughing. “So when he said that I was, I was shocked. … We don’t do anything to get any type of credit. We just do it because we want to. So this is totally unnecessary – but I’m honored.”
This story was originally published April 17, 2026 at 11:56 AM with the headline "‘More than a coach’s wife’: Emily Beamer wins SC football humanitarian award."
