McKenna “JoJo” Mulholland is not 100 percent.
The redshirt junior Ball State softball player said she’s not even remotely close to that mark when it comes to her mental health.
“I think I'm probably at about 20 percent,” she said. “Nowhere close to where I want to be.”
She has spent multiple evenings a week driving around Muncie. Though the Oviedo, Florida, native has no clue where her 2024 Kia Forte is taking her, she keeps going. It depends on the day when a certain emotion will appear on these late-night cruises: anger, sadness and, sometimes, happiness.
“I still don't know Muncie, and I've been here for four years,” Mulholland said. “I would turn off my GPS, and I would just go down a bunch of random roads. I'd go down country roads or by the railroad tracks. I would end up on some two-lane road with no street lights on.”
Even with that, the Cardinals’ infielder still goes on about her day with a smile on her face. She doesn’t let her teammates see the pain she’s been in and admits she’s stubborn when it comes to talking about her emotions.
Why?
It was April of 2023 when her stepdad, Joe Gioia, was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. He died nine months later in December 2023. One day after his funeral, she was on her way back to Muncie to prepare for the upcoming softball season.
It didn’t help that during the season, she was in a slump she felt would never end.
Mulholland believes this year started the same way.
“I'm not performing exactly [how] I want myself to perform,” she said. “I'm falling short of my expectations right now.”
‘It felt like a fever dream’
It was spring of 2023 when Mulholland was on the phone with her mom, Lisa, as the Cardinals were on the road to a tournament. She could tell something was wrong but couldn’t tell where her mom was over FaceTime. Lisa informed McKenna she was at the hospital as Joe was having stomach pains and went down to a knee at his job site.
“Prior knowledge, [he had] no health issues. He was still swinging back a couple’ cold ones whenever he wanted,” McKenna said.
McKenna received the official news about Joe’s health right before the 2023 Mid-American Conference (MAC) Tournament. She talked to then-Ball State head coach Lacey Schurr, who assured her to do whatever she needed to care for herself.
McKenna questioned if she’d even play. Joe shut that idea down quickly.
“Joe was the one who called me and said, ‘Look, sweetie, I'm fine. Go play, and I'm gonna see you in a few weeks,’” she said. “That's the reassurance I needed.”
After the season, McKenna went home for the summer and said Joe was doing well with chemotherapy. Following the start of school in August, Joe was scheduled to have a procedure to try and remove the cancer.
She flew home to be with her family, but at the last minute, the appointment was canceled. Joe had to be off chemotherapy for weeks, and then things became more serious.
“That was really discouraging to hear from his end,” McKenna said. “From my end, I was like, ‘OK, this is the end of it. We just gotta get through this, and then he's gonna be all better now.’ So, I went home, and he's just in poor spirits. It was really hard to see.”
As time went on, Joe’s health worsened. She knew something was wrong when Joe, Lisa, McKenna and her stepsister went on a car ride. With McKenna needing a new car, Joe rushed them to a dealership and picked out her current means of transportation.
She knew the situation wasn’t getting better.
“I don't want to remember him when he was sick,” McKenna said. “It spoke volumes to me, thinking back on it now. I didn't realize at the moment why everything was so rushed. I realized it was because he knew that he was passing, but just being there, it just spoke volumes about how selfless he was … He used his bonus to get me my new car. He put the bonus that he worked hard for, and he put it aside so that we could put a down payment on my new car.”
And then, it was time. Before McKenna went to the hospital for the final time, she knew what was coming. Standing in her kitchen, she broke down. Her brother, John, was there to try to console her.
“I'm completely hysterical. I've never seen myself that way before,” McKenna said. “I couldn't even explain the thoughts that were going through my head. I'm like, ‘No way this is happening. No way it's happening.’ My brother comes and comforts me and calms me down. And he's like, ‘We're gonna go.’”
While McKenna was the one who needed consoling, it was her turn to do the same thing for Lisa when the doctors handed her the “Do not resuscitate” paperwork hours later.
It’s a moment McKenna will never forget.
“It was the saddest thing that I feel like has happened in my life because just seeing her fall apart, and I had to be there for her, and it wasn't the other way around,” McKenna said. “I had to step up and be the strong one, and I wasn't strong whatsoever, and I just had to fake it till I made it.
“I remember holding her up as she signed the paper with all the nurses coming out. She collapses in my arms, and I'm just sitting there, trying to hold it together. I'm like, ‘What in the world is going on?’ It felt like a fever dream.”
‘I couldn't handle it mentally’
As soon as she returned to Muncie, things were not OK. It wasn’t the place she fell in love with when she first stepped on the campus in 2021, she said. After being recruited by Ball State, she had no interest in playing for the Cardinals.
“I remember telling my parents, ‘I'm not taking it. I'm not going to Indiana. My whole childhood, my whole recruiting process, I was like, ‘I'm staying in Florida,’” McKenna said. “I want to play with my family. But then, when I came here, it's like the wedding dress phenomenon. When you know, you know.”
She remembers that first year and was excited to be in Delaware County. Being from the Sunshine State, Ball State is the first place she saw snow. Multiple members of the softball and other athletic teams all went sledding and took in the scenery.
But after Joe’s death, Muncie had just become a place where she was alone. Besides her boyfriend, Ball State baseball player Houston King, and her two roommates, she felt like no one could help her.
That’s when she began walking and driving around at late hours to get away from everything.
“Before that passing, she was always bubbly and had a smile on her face,” King said. “Afterwards, she stayed the same to the people outside, but deep inside, I could tell she was hurting.”
There was one occasion where McKenna began the journey home to Florida because she couldn’t deal with the stress anymore. She was 30 minutes in when Lisa talked her daughter into turning around and going back to school.
McKenna also started cutting people out of her life when things got tougher.
“I stopped pouring my love and care into [relationships] because it was draining me,” she said. “I realized that I needed to give myself more love, and I needed to give myself more grace. I was giving it to so many people [who] didn’t deserve it.”
Though that helped, McKenna still found herself sitting in her room crying for hours, even when it came to everyday things.
“It’s a nice feeling being alone and no one's gonna know how hard I cry right now,” McKenna said.
When it came to the people she wanted in her life, she still hid everything, even though she was struggling on the inside.
“I just tried to put on this strong face in front of [people] and act like nothing mattered to me when, in reality, everything mattered to me,” she said. “If somebody raised their voice at me in a certain way, I would have deteriorated inside because I couldn't handle it mentally.”
Her roommates at the time, Ball State softball player McKayla Timmons and former Cardinal Samantha Jo Mata, both tried to help their “best friend.”
“We would do our best to make sure she was never home alone for too long,” Mata said. “We knew she would kind of self-destruct if we let her, and we didn't want her to do that. So, we made sure that we kind of stuck by her.”
Some ways they tried to help McKenna were bringing her food and taking her and Lisa out to dinner when they were together in Muncie. But at the end of the day, nothing really worked as McKenna knew what the core problem was.
“I had no time to go through the grief,” she said. “I had no time to even let it sink in that he was gone.”
While she was trying to deal with this, there was something else that gave her trouble: softball.
After recording a .336 batting average and 43 hits during her redshirt freshman season in 2023, she finished 2024 with just a .247 average and 37 hits. She also had 10 errors on defense compared to the five she had in her opening year.
She said it was the worst slump of her life. Every time she made solid contact, she felt it would go right to a fielder for an out.
“When you're at this level, if you're not performing, I think it all comes down to the mental game,” McKenna said. “I don't think it has anything to do with my swing. I love my swing … It's not me trusting the process.”
Currently, she has a .266 batting average with 21 hits, 20 walks, but also has 15 strikeouts. On defense, she has four errors. Though she’s had moments of success, she said the game “isn’t fun” at times, a feeling that has led to its own unique struggle.
“I put so much stress into my performance, whether I’m looked at as a captain or a leader,” she said. “I put so much into my identity of people liking me because I’m good at softball.”
But despite the negative play, she’s kept a smile on her face this season. Being a captain, she feels she has to. Mata believes she’s been able to do this because she only opens herself up to certain individuals.
“You ask her how she is, and she's always gonna tell you she's fine. ‘Oh, I'm fine, oh, I'm fine,’” Mata said. “She goes through so much, but she's always fine, everything's fine. She goes to practice, and she's the fucking light in the room. She's brightening everybody else's day.”
‘It's OK to be vulnerable’
McKenna doesn’t think she’ll ever get back to the “JoJo” she was before Joe died. In fact, she doesn’t know if she’ll return to 100 percent anytime soon.
“I'm missing a huge part of my life. I still have a great support system, and I have great parents, but what you go through in life makes you who you are,” McKenna said. “I don't think I'll ever go back to how I was when I was 18, or mentally how I was when I was 18. I've learned that life gets harder, and you just learn how to deal with it better.”
But there are some things she has prioritized because of this: Building and keeping stronger relationships with loved ones is the No. 1 priority for her.
“His death played a big role in how I handle life. I can’t imagine losing someone else or losing someone like my mom or dad,” she said. “Before he passed, I maybe took my relationships for granted, and I didn’t think about how much those meant to me until you don’t have them.”
Some of the other ways she keeps his memory alive are the “threes” celebration — Joe’s favorite number was 33, so she holds up three fingers. Another is something she’s done for most of her career, but it means even more now.
Before she steps up to the plate, she draws a cross in the dirt. She said her faith has helped her with everything she’s been through.
“I'm not the person to play the woe card or anything,” she said. “But I do acknowledge that I've been through some difficult, difficult situations in my life. I know I've been through some trauma, and I like reminding myself that it's OK to be vulnerable.”
Though she is still struggling, there are a few things that have helped. Her faith and remembering what Joe used to tell her. When McKenna and Lisa were on their way back from Florida, one day removed from his funeral, they were next to a Mountain Dew truck for most of the journey. It was Joe’s favorite drink.
At a gas station bathroom, the phrase “Everything happens for a reason” was written on the wall. Joe said this all the time. With those signs, McKenna knew her stepdad was there.
But the one thing he told her that will never leave her is the phrase he lived his life by: ‘Who cares?’
“He would just remind me, ‘Who cares? Literally, who cares? You're the only one [who] cares,’” McKenna said. “… He was just that subtle reminder that it's just a game.”
Due to the phrase and that she dedicated this season to Joe, McKenna has one goal in mind this year.
“I don’t want to play for anyone but myself,” she said. “I want to go back to the little girl that had fun and had no pressure, no anxiety, no stress, no nothing … I don’t want to care about results, stats or anything. I just want to embrace the opportunity and the time I have left to play softball.”
Contact Zach Carter via email at zachary.carter@bsu.edu or via X @ZachCarter85.
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