How Faith Sustained ESPN Broadcaster Through ‘Death Sentence’ Cancer Battle
By Movieguide® Contributor
For nearly three decades, ESPN’s Holly Rowe has been a sideline broadcaster for the NBA and college football, but a cancer battle has put her life into perspective.
“I just grew up as a college football fan,” she told Andrew Erwin of where her passion for sports began. “I wasn’t a woman that was a fan, a girl that was a fan. I just love college football. And you know, people always ask me what’s my favorite sport to cover, and it really is [college football]. I’m coming up on my 29th season for ESPN, and I have only missed one college football weekend in 29 years because of COVID.”
She’s proud of that streak because “it speaks to true love and passion and respect for college football.”
One part of Rowe’s job that she takes very seriously is that she doesn’t want fans to remember her.
“I sat down in a cafe on the Upper West Side in New York City with Marty Glickman, and some of the advice he gave me changed my career,” Rowe said. “He said, ‘The audience should always remember the story that you told. They shouldn’t remember you, and by that, I mean get out of the way of the story.’ Tell the story in such a way that it’s only about the people in the story.”
The broadcaster does have a remarkable story, though.
In 2016, she found out she had “four new inoperable tumors just 11 days before having to cover Texas’ upset win over Notre Dame on the gridiron.”
“Eleven days before that game, I was having a lung biopsy, where they stick a needle about two feet long into your lungs while you’re awake so that you can obey breathing cues. I mean, that’s about as real as it gets, and you find out you have inoperable tumors in your lung,” she said, per Deseret News. “It’s a death sentence because your lungs are the thing you need to breathe and that was a death sentence for me.”
“I spent a lot of time reading and praying. I listened to praise music to lift my spirits” Rowe said. “I drew close to God because I knew ultimately, He was in control of my life and my destiny.”
“When fear starts creeping in, I pray” she shared. “I pray for healing. But more importantly, I pray that this disease will bring me closer to God.”
Today, Rowe is cancer-free.
“I’m literally a miracle. I had a 12% chance that this drug would work for me, and it has. It’s immunotherapy,” she said. “But I’ve kept living my joyful moments, and that’s what I want people to do a little bit better. Instead of the stress of what do I have to do today, and do more of what brings me joy today. Like, that’s where I want people to live.”
