If you’ve ever seen Shelby Bumgarner on Duke’s campus, there’s a decent chance she’s sporting a black leather jacket, emblazoned with a bold, white letter D. It’s not just the varsity jacket that student-athletes at Duke receive; for Shelby, that jacket is more like a superhero’s cape.
“When I put on this jacket, it’s like I’m wearing a different hat or aspect to myself,” she says. “I am the interviewer. I am the amplifier. I am making these student-athletes feel important.”
She’s wearing this jacket in the basement of the Brodhead Center on a sunny Friday afternoon. The rest of her typical outfits reflect Shelby’s dynamic personality. Her stylish jeans and bright designer sneakers work as a perfect combination that immediately lets anyone who sees her know one thing is for certain: Shelby Bumgarner is a force to be reckoned with.
Usually, she’s the one asking the questions. For as long as she can remember, asking questions has been her second nature.
“I’ve never been interviewed before,” she admits. “I was just so curious as a kid … I grew up, and I just loved asking questions.”
There are numerous pictures of a young Shelby with a microphone in her hand: a young Shelby holding a microphone up to the face of her younger sister, Stella; a young Shelby dressed up as a princess but not without her signature microphone; and, most telling, a young Shelby dressed up for her elementary school’s Career Day with a microphone decorated with the word ESPN in hand.
“I had this tag that said ESPN, sports reporter,” Shelby says with a broad smile across her face. “Ever since third grade, I wanted to do this and I wanted to tell stories.”
Even back then, that little girl with the microphone knew exactly what she wanted.
‘Threw me into that environment’
The Bumgarner household was always destined to be intimately connected with sports. Both Ron and Jenny Bumgarner worked in the sports industry; they met in 1991 working for the Baltimore Orioles. When Ron got a job working for the Boston Red Sox, the family decided to stay in Maryland; Ron commuted every week between Boston and Pasadena, Md.
Shelby’s love of sports is unsurprising given the world she grew up in with both her parents as examples. Her childhood was filled with travel to Boston, surrounded by people who constantly talked about one thing — their love for sports.
“My dad threw me into that environment when I was three years old and I loved it,” Shelby recalls.
Jenny credits the “Boston Red Sox family” for giving Shelby both her love for sports and the confidence to interview people with ease. Growing up around adults who worked in sports, Shelby and her younger sister developed their social skills differently than most other children.
“She always wanted to talk to people, and she would ask them questions and engage with them at such a young age,” Jenny told The Chronicle. “She’s always been able to entertain a room.”
To accommodate that ability to entertain a room, just as Ron was throwing her into the sports world — where she would eventually find a love for field hockey — Mrs. Bumgarner threw Shelby into theater “as fast as she could.” As a self-described “theater kid” growing up, Shelby had an equal love for the performing arts as she did for the field hockey pitch. Theater became “a huge social outlet” which allowed Shelby to channel the storytelling and performing aspect of herself.
But with the dawn of high school, Shelby was forced to put those storytelling aspirations to the side. Though the skills she learned in the theater would continue to follow her, her focus slowly narrowed into the world of college recruitment. Field hockey, one of the three sports she grew up playing, now consumed her life. Getting recruited to play in college became the only goal, and when Duke came calling, Shelby readily answered.
“I was so excited,” Shelby recalls. “I didn't know if I made the right decision, but I was just so excited to be a part of what this university had to offer.”
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And Duke would have plenty to offer her in return.
‘A deep concern for people’
Having had the goal of working for ESPN for as long as she could remember, Shelby jumped on any storytelling opportunities she found in her first two years at Duke. Most of these were through student-run clubs, where Shelby continued to develop her interview skills in between practices for field hockey and studying for her classes.
“What people definitely don't understand is that, you're doing the athletic schedule, you're doing your academic schedule, and then I'm doing my little fun, little passion interview schedule on top of it,” Shelby says.
Her already loaded schedule grew even more packed the summer before her junior year at Duke. As Shelby scrolled through Instagram, an advertisement from Blue Devil Network popped onto her feed. "Interns Wanted," it read. Knowing that the opportunity fit perfectly with her eventual life goal, Shelby submitted her application, calling it one of those moments in life where you “just send it.” The gamble paid off. After a few rounds of interviews, Shelby joined the first intern class for the Blue Devil Network.
“It was super overwhelming,” Shelby says. She had a camera thrust into her hands and had to learn how to use Adobe and other editing software.
But it paid off. After several months of working as an intern, December of her junior year rolled around, leading to “the best thing that has happened" in her Duke experience thus far. The heads of the Blue Devil Network told Shelby that they wanted her to host a new platform where she would interview Duke student-athletes, sharing not just their athletic stories, but also their personal ones, with the larger Duke community. For Shelby, it would be the opportunity of a lifetime. Then and there, the True Blue Podcast was born.
Since that December 2023 day when the podcast was still just an idea conceptualized at Blue Devil Tower, Shelby has interviewed eight student-athletes. Shelby and Maggie Graham talked about the women’s soccer player’s legacy of leading a team with her sister. With wrestler Kwasi Bonsu, Shelby discussed the challenges of wrestling as a man of color. These athletes have shared the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows with Shelby as the girl with the microphone asks them who they are off the field. She expanded her reach to include coaches as well, most recently interviewing Duke softball head coach Marissa Young,
“She’s got a huge heart as well, and she has such a deep concern for people,” Jenny said. “[It] allows her to engage easily in conversation.”
Everything in Shelby’s life connects back to her innate concern for people, her desire to tell their stories and give them a platform to share the issues important to them. With her easy smile and infectious laugh, Shelby has the unique ability to make every single student-athlete she interviews feel comfortable sharing his or her story with a rare vulnerability. And while that certainly has had an impact on the athletes, Shelby feels it, too; she truly relishes the chance to share the stories of those who so often are reduced to a jersey number or a stat line.
“I get to talk to the best athlete on the team and the athlete that doesn't get much minutes but is going to be a future neurosurgeon one day,” Shelby says. “The diversity of the people that I'm talking to and showcasing that they are important and they are valued no matter what they're doing on the field.”
It’s especially important work at a school like Duke, where all students — but especially student-athletes — feel immense pressure to pretend that they are always perfect, that they never struggle in their day-to-day lives. Through the True Blue Podcast, Shelby dismantles those stereotypes and reminds everyone who listens that perfection is a myth.
‘A transformative experience’
Aside from dismantling myths and stereotypes in the athletic world, working on the True Blue Podcast has opened numerous other doors for Shelby. A former Duke mom who watched the podcast got into contact with her and asked the question most college students dread, “What do you want to do with your life?”
But after hearing Shelby explain her lifelong passion and her desire to tell stories, the woman told Shelby that ESPN’s student internship applications had recently opened, and encouraged her to apply.
Shelby did. Another one of those life moments where “just sending it” immensely paid off. Before she knew it, Shelby had completed the interview process and was hired to work at ESPN as a summer production intern.
Shelby worked at numerous different assignments that summer, including production at SportsCenter, where she jokes that she was “kind of nocturnal for two months.” The odd work hours didn’t phase her. Shelby was doing what she loved. The little girl ready for Career Day with her ESPN microphone and reporter badge was beaming inside.
At the ESPN office in Bristol, Conn., Shelby built on the skills the Blue Devil Network had laid the foundation for. Much like those early days in Boston, Shelby was surrounded by leaders and innovators in the sports world.
“They were so willing to pour into interns like myself,” Shelby recalls. “It was definitely a transformative experience for me, because during my time there, I was like, ‘This is the goal.’”
That summer spent at ESPN only reaffirmed Shelby’s desire to work in the sports industry. With her graduation from college looming in May, Shelby is now ready for the formidable “real world.” She knows that work will lead her right back to Bristol.
‘The work that I’m doing here matters’
In July 2024, Shelby won the ACC Top Six for Service award, a well-deserved manifestation of all she has poured into the community that has poured into her. The award is given out annually at every school in the conference and has the aim of “recognizing student-athletes that have demonstrated outstanding community service and community relations.”
“Accolades like that, they make your heart warm,” she says. “It means that I'm doing something right and it means that the work that I'm doing here matters.”
With this award in her hand and the summer at ESPN under her belt, Shelby returned to Durham and to the True Blue Podcast ready to dive back into the passion project that had quickly become the center of her world.
Knowing that the work she had done matters and will live on past her graduation from Duke in a few short months, Shelby sits at ease in the basement of the Brodhead Center. She wears her signature jacket, her bedazzled jeans and her stylish sneakers — this time in a metallic silver shade — like always. On her wrist, a stack of bracelets jangle when she talks, which is always with her hands. Most have a word or short phrase on them, reminders of how Shelby wants to live her life: “Patience,” “Dream Big,” “Evolve.” One bracelet reads “617,” the Boston area code — a token for the city that started her down this path nearly 20 years ago.
Shelby talks animatedly about how she just finished an interview with a group of tenters, marveling at their commitment to sleeping outside for weeks in support of Duke men’s basketball. When the conversation shifts to her work, her eyes light up. In the last three years, the True Blue Podcast has allowed student-athletes to share their stories beyond the stats, to show their passions and dreams first.
“It gives me purpose on this campus. It gives me purpose in my everyday,” Shelby says. Her love for storytelling has carried her from childhood to college and now will ground her in the post-Duke world. “I would be lucky to do this for the rest of my life.”
The little girl with the microphone is still asking questions.