ESPN’s Holly Rowe Draws Inspiration from Cancer Journey as She Seeks to Bring Joy to Others

Photo above: After delivering world-class sportscasting throughout her cancer treatments, ESPN’s Holly Rowe is now using her story to help others. (Photos courtesy of the Joy+US Foundation)

 

The Little Rock Touchdown Club welcomed ESPN sportscaster Holly Rowe Oct. 27. During an interview that touched on everything from her upbringing and career to a health scare and motherhood, Rowe discussed how an intentional search for joy helped her through a life-threatening cancer diagnosis.

 

 

“What my joy journal will be for today is when I walked in that door … and you all stood up for me,” she told LRTDC “That was beautiful, so that’s going to be in my joy journal today.”

 

She later presented a scholarship to a college softball player in Mena recovering from Hodgkin lymphoma as part of the Joy+US Foundation, Rowe’s campaign to bring joy to others while maintaining the mindset she cultivated while living each day as though it were her last.

 

Rowe opened up to AY About You about her journey in sports, cancer and the foundation, as well as her experience at LRTDC.

 

“It was so warm and loving,” Rowe said. “People were so kind, and we just had a blast.”

 

 

Few children have as strong a concept of what they want to be when they grow up as Rowe did. She said she knew she wanted to be a journalist by the time she took a career test in fifth grade.

 

“I remember raising my hand and saying, ‘My job’s not on here. I’m going to be a reporter,’” she said. “I just had good role models in Salt Lake City, Utah, where I grew up, and I just had a really clear vision of what I wanted to be.”

 

She played a little bit of everything in school, participating in softball, basketball, volleyball, and track and field. However, with Title IX in its infancy, she never had the opportunity to play at the college level.

 

“I think probably part of my life is I’m a frustrated athlete that didn’t get to go on to college,” she said.

 

 

Nonetheless, Rowe has made a name for herself in the sports world over a more than 30-year career at ESPN that has included serving as the first female color commentator for the Utah Jazz and earning a place in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

 

Having risen to the upper echelons of sportscasting, Rowe remains dedicated to promoting women’s sports, which she said have garnered incredible ratings since being broadcast on network television.

 

“Just think of how great the women’s sports could have been and the ratings would have been all these years if we had just had more opportunity,” she said. “I think the No. 1 thing is just those opportunities to continue to be showcased on the highest platform, and I’m really proud of my company because we’ve done that, and the women are getting more of a showcase.”

 

 

She added that she hears from female fans all the time who say they wish they had gotten into sports journalism but never saw it as an option.

 

“I want people to go for it,” she said. “I don’t want people to get older, be my age and say you wish you would have done something. I want young women and young girls to realize there’s no box. You are not in any box. You get to decide where you go and what you try to achieve.”

 

 

Rowe is no stranger to hardship, from surviving her college years on a diet of instant mashed potatoes and ketchup to raising her son, McKylin, while making a name for herself as a sideline reporter.

 

When life threw Rowe her biggest curveball yet — a Stage 4 metastatic melanoma diagnosis — she decided to play through. She described to the touchdown club sitting awake through biopsies of what turned out to be inoperable tumors in her lungs and working a college football game 11 days later.

 

 

She credited new advancements in cancer treatment with her eventual recovery.

 

“Immunotherapy saved my life,” she said.

 

Before there were clear scans and survivorship programs, however, the outlook was grim. At one point, a doctor told Rowe, “You need to start thinking about how you’re spending your time.” Rowe realized that meant she might not have a lot of time left.

 

 

“I was really down, and it’s tough, and you get depressed,” she said. “I thought, ‘Well, I can’t control what’s happening inside of my body right now, but I can control the way I’m living and being joyful every day.’”

 

Rowe started seeking out those flickers of joy and recording them in a joy journal.

 

“I would write down all my little moments of joy,” she said. “Later, when things were hard or I was going through a tough chemo session, I would go and read my journal and remind myself of all these joyful moments that I was cataloguing every day.”

 

She said her career was and continues to be a wellspring.

 

“What I do for my living and being at games and going to games, it really does give me a lot of joy,” she said. “I had a moment [recently] where there was 100,000 people and the band is playing, you know, and I’m just looking around like, ‘I am so lucky to be in these moments, and I am so happy right now.’”

 

 

Rowe worked while undergoing chemo treatment for four years. While her competitive spirit kept her running from game to game, she said there are times now when she wishes she had taken a knee.

 

“As moms, I think we want to be superwomen and show that nothing’s wrong and we’re normal and nothing has to change, but I think as humans, we need to be vulnerable and ask for help,” she said. “I want people to know that that is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of strength to ask for help when you need it.”

 

Superwoman or not, Rowe is a hero to many. Not only has she provided a role model for women around the world through her work at ESPN, but she now helps others find joy through the Joy+US Foundation, which she co-founded with her son a year and a half ago.

 

“We want to be the little pebble in the pond where you throw a pebble in the pond, and all the ripples go out,” she said. “We want to be that pebble of we’re helping people find joy and seek joy in their life a little more intentionally.”

 

As part of the Joy+US Foundation, Rowe created the $10,000 Alex Wilcox Memorial Scholarship. Wilcox was a softball player at Mississippi State who died of ovarian cancer in 2018 at age 18.

 

 

“She would go to chemo and then go to practice at Mississippi State and try to play in games,” Rowe said. “Her journey and story really inspired me, and I just wanted to make sure that there is always a softball player playing in Alex Wilcox’s name.”

 

Last year, the Joy+US Foundation awarded the inaugural Alex Wilcox Memorial Scholarship to Grace Westmoreland at Yale University in Connecticut, whose mother had been diagnosed with cancer while the player was in high school.

 

This year, the scholarship went to Kensley Allen, a freshman at the University of Arkansas Rich Mountain who spent her senior year of high school battling Hodgkin lymphoma. Holly presented the scholarship during a surprise ceremony at UA Rich Mountain in November.

 

“It was amazing,” Allen said. “It was very unexpected. I did not think I would get it at all.”

 

She added that the scholarship money will help pay for her education, which will eventually include medical school as she works her way toward becoming an oncologist or surgeon.

 

In addition to the Alex Wilcox Memorial Scholarship, the foundation hosts what Rowe calls “Joy Journeys.”

 

This spring, the foundation took 7-year-old leukemia survivor Blakeleigh Thompson to the women’s Final Four to watch Dawn Staley coach the South Carolina women’s basketball team. Staley is known for wearing a necklace made by the girl.

 

The foundation also took a young football fan with autism to the Heisman Trophy celebration and brought an Oregon community college softball team to the Women’s College World Series after their bus was hit by a drunk driver, resulting in the deaths of the coach and one of the players.

 

“When we see a need and we see a way that we can bring a little joy and help people, we are trying to fulfill that in different ways,” Rowe said.

 

The next step, she added, is to develop programming for people currently receiving treatment for cancer. The foundation is also working to provide softball and football programs for underprivileged children in Florida, she added.

 

McKylin, an up-and-coming actor who said he has had to work “survival jobs” while getting his foot in the door through roles in films such as American Underdog and the upcoming Dual Plans, takes an active role in the foundation alongside his mother.

 

“There’s nothing like it,” he said. “I’ve never felt more purpose from just bringing people joy. It’s such an overwhelming responsibility, but it just drives you every day, and I get to be inspired by my mother every day now.”

 

As she grows the foundation, Rowe continues to advocate for women’s sports and bring high-quality sportscasting to fans. Through it all, she maintains a relentless pursuit of joy, something she might never have discovered without battling a life-threatening illness.

 

“I hit a time when I wasn’t sure if I would still be here, if I would still be living at this point,” she said. “I’ve been blessed with extra time in my life, and I have promised that I will not waste it, and I will spend whatever time I have left doing good for others. That is my mission in life right now.”

 

To donate to the Joy+US Foundation, visit joyus.foundation.