'Mama Shelly' Takes Holistic Vision Into New Role
Before she was Mama Shelly, Shelly Mullenix was TiTi.
Mullenix's titles, nicknames, and job responsibilities seem to be in eternal competition to outnumber the other, each reflecting the need she serves to the population that wields it.
There's the aforementioned Mama Shelly, the most common cognomen around LSU's Football Operations facility, especially among its student-athletes. Mama Shelly is the maternal protector of her athletes, doling out tough love, lending a sympathetic shoulder, and taping sprained ankles.
Senior Associate Athletic Director of Health and Wellness Shelly Mullenix is the most bureaucratic, a title she earned this summer in a new, transformational role in the athletic department. It's the culmination of everything Mullenix has worked for since arriving at LSU in 1997, when she was an up-and-coming athletic trainer with an open, innovative mind and a different perspective.
Shelly Mullenix, M.S.W, meanwhile, is the most recent, after Mullenix earned her Master's from LSU's School of Social Work in August. It's a degree four years in the making, and it's also a window to her plans to keep LSU's holistic treatment of student-athletes – current and former – at the forefront of college athletics.
But it all started years ago with TiTi, a player's term of endearment for the closest thing to a mom a football program can offer.