FULL CIRCLE

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

For Shelby Hild, Baylor Athletics' Director of Communications, it all began a little over nine years ago as a media relations assistant at the Missouri Valley Conference office in St. Louis.

By then, she had already done a ticket operations internship with the River City Rascals independent-league baseball team and a game day assistant internship with the St. Louis Rams during the 2014 NFL season.

But the Valley opened the door to what has become a career in athletics communications for Hild. Already doing a community relations internship with the conference office, she became the communications contact for golf, tennis, track and field and swimming when the previous media relations assistant left in January 2015.

"Mike Kern, who is now the Senior Associate Commissioner of Communications there, asked me if I wanted to try this on top of my internship," she said. "And I was like, 'I don't know . . . but sure.'''

The hesitation was only because she had never done it, didn't even know what media relations or athletics communications was. Now, directing the student intern program with Baylor athletics communications, Hild is mentoring prospective future sports information directors – SIDs, to us old heads.

"I think for me, it's cool, because I was never a student worker," she said. "I didn't even know this field existed when I was a student. So, it's so encouraging for me to see that there are so many kids interested in this. . . . And it is rewarding, because like coaches with their student-athletes, you hope you are making an impact.

"There is nothing cooler than connecting with all these students and then having them come back and be like, 'Hey, thanks for that time you taught me this,' or 'Remember that one time we did that, it was such a cool experience.' That, to me, is so rewarding, because you don't always get a lot of thank you's in the SID world. You just don't. Just to know that you're making a little bit of an impact, I think it fills my cup more than anything."

Back from L-R: Jerry Hill, Matt Roberts, David Kaye, Brent Ingram, Shelby Hild, John Morris, Colin Pirtle. Front row L-R: Madelon Allen, Max Calderone, Katy Gilmore

Back from L-R: Jerry Hill, Matt Roberts, David Kaye, Brent Ingram, Shelby Hild, John Morris, Colin Pirtle. Front row L-R: Madelon Allen, Max Calderone, Katy Gilmore

Next month, in what she calls a "full-circle moment," the 30-year-old Hild will leave Baylor to return to the Missouri Valley Conference as Assistant Commissioner for Communications.

"Devastated to lose her, for sure," said Brent Ingram, Baylor Assistant AD for Communications. "She is a special member of this culture and this community and did a great job for her teams. But understanding completely why: it's an advancement in her career, certainly, in a place that she's comfortable with. And it gets her closer to her family. Never going to fault her for that.

"I'm just glad that we were able to put her in a position to find that next step in her career. It was obvious when we hired her that she was going to have a great opportunity very soon. So, not surprising at all."

As Brent said, it's not just a return to the place where it all started, the move will also put Shelby a little over two hours from her family home in Pekin, Illinois. She returned to those roots back in the fall to be there when her mom went through chemo treatments for Stage 4 ovarian cancer.

"It goes back to the whole why I chose to go to school in St. Louis," said Shelby, who earned her undergrad degree with the Rawlings Sports Business Management program at Maryville University, in St. Louis in 2015. "Working in St. Louis, it's close enough to home but far enough away.

"It's a full-circle moment. You can't ever question why God is doing something. If I'm not at Baylor, I can't go home to be with my mom during that time. And I'm not at Baylor if I don't get the opportunity I did at the Missouri Valley Conference when I was 21, 22 years old."

A native Midwesterner, Shelby was born in Milwaukee and grew up in Pekin, Illinois, which is 165 miles from St. Louis and 141 miles from Edwardsville, Ill., where she started her collegiate career at SIU Edwardsville.

"All I remember about Wisconsin is we had a navy-blue house," she said. "My mom's from Pekin. My dad is from Tremont, which is a suburb of Pekin, if you can imagine it having a suburb."

Shelby said Linsay, her older sister by 10 ½ years, is the "best older sister in the world, because she let me tag along if her and her friends were hanging out in high school. And I'm this pesky little 6-year-old."

"We dropped her off at Eastern Illinois University when I was 8 years old, and I cried the entire way home," she said, "because my parents dropped off my best friend and I was never going to see her again. I might have been a little dramatic."

The close bond she had with her dad, Don, as a child and growing up was developed through a mutual love of sports.

"I remember sitting on his lap in the living room, watching the Pistons and Pacers when they had a brawl," said Shelby, referencing the "Malice in the Palace" on Nov. 19, 2004. "I was just sitting there taking it all in. And my dad was like, 'We should just turn this off. This isn't what sports is.' . . . I've just been hooked on sports since I was a kid. Not necessarily like a sports junky, knowing all the stats, but just a fan of watching them."

Initially, Shelby went to SIU Edwardsville to become a physical therapist so that she could still be connected to sports.

"I'm not good at science, what made me think I would be qualified and actually enjoy being a physical therapist? I don't know," she said.

After switching to sports psychology the first semester of her freshman year, Shelby found out that it can take up to 8-10 years to become a sports psychologist.

Sitting in the school library, she Googled "sports majors" and found sports management. "Oh my gosh, you really can (major in sports)," Shelby said.

Researching different schools with that particular degree program, she discovered the Rawlings Sports Business Management program at Maryville University in St. Louis.

"At the time, it was the only corporate-sponsored sports management program," Shelby said. "And it's because Rawlings' headquarters was literally in the parking lot of Maryville."

Getting all her general studies classes out of the way in two years at SIUE, Shelby "jumped into volunteering" and worked with the St. Louis Rams and River City Rascals before getting her feet wet on the collegiate level working the basketball championships with the Missouri Valley Conference.

As a community relations intern with the Missouri Valley Conference in the fall of 2014, Shelby built relationships with local nonprofit organizations in the St. Louis area, including the Boys & Girls Club, YMCA and Girls on the Run, to grow the fan and community support of the MVC women's basketball tournament.

During her last semester at Maryville, Shelby took on the added responsibility as the conference's media relations assistant for golf, tennis, swimming and diving and track and field.

"I just showed up, and (Mike Kern) was like, 'Okay, here's how you do it,''' she said. "And I just fell in love with it."

So much so that she didn't apply for a single job when the then-commissioner told her they were hoping to add the full-time position back "and we'd love to have you in this role."

"Since I was young and naïve, I took that as, 'Oh, they're going to hire me,''' Shelby said.

But that summer, after finishing out the year covering track and field for the MVC, she got the word that the position was not approved. "And I have nothing."

Emailing all the head contacts at the 10 schools in the Valley, to see if they had anything, she got a lot of "You were wonderful. Wish you the best." But finally, Rick Kindhart at Missouri State contacted her and told her about a graduate assistant position in communications at the school in Springfield, Mo.

While working on a master's degree in sports management, she was the day-to-day communications contact for men's and women's soccer, cross country and track & field, but was also assisting with women's basketball her first year and men's basketball in her final year.

Shelby's first full-time communications job was almost her last.

Hired at Kansas City, formerly known as UMKC, as an assistant director of communications in February 2017, she was six hours from home and "alone all summer" after her boss left after just three months.

"I'm 24 years old, I have no idea what I'm doing," she said. "I'm still young in my career, so I haven't really networked with anybody to ask for help. And nobody in our organization knew how to do my job. I think it was the most miserable I'd ever been."

On top of that, after being promoted to director in August 2017, Shelby sat in on a committee meeting where they discussed "either dropping (UMKC) to D-II, dropping to D-III or cutting athletics all together."

"I remember calling my parents and saying, "I made a horrible mistake. I shouldn't be working in sports. They're about to cut my job. Can I move home if that happens?'''

Of course, they said yes. But Shelby was thrown a lifeline when Illinois State posted an opening for an assistant director of athletics communications job. Which also took her back to the Missouri Valley Conference and closer to home. ISU, located in Normal, Ill., is only 42 miles from Pekin.

"At that point in my career, the money and the title don't matter, it was the experience and knowing that I was going to be taken care of there," she said.

Working under Mike Williams, Shelby was the primary media contact for volleyball, softball and swimming & diving in her 3 ½ years with the Redbirds.

"It was a sense of security," she said. "I was close to home, but it's still a grind, just as much as it was at UMKC. You just have more people but higher expectations. And it was cool, because I truly felt like I was a part of a family there right away. Just a lot more stability there. It says something about a place when people stick around for a while. So, it wasn't a steppingstone anymore. I knew I could actually stay there and grow."

She also grew in her faith at Illinois State, getting involved at a local church and stepping out of her comfort zone by participating – and eventually co-leading – a 10-week intense Bible study called Rooted that "pulls everything out of you." We often joke about God's timing, but what better time to be a participant than at the tail-end of the COVID-19 pandemic in the fall of 2020.

"Everything you try to hide, it will pull it right out of you," Shelby said of the Rooted Bible study. "I just really grew in my faith. We finished in November of 2020, and I decided to get re-baptized. And I knew that God was calling me to something different."

That turned out to be a calling all the way to College Station, Texas – 14 ½ hours from home – as an assistant director of athletics communication at Texas A&M.

"That's why you can't ever question why God is doing something," she said. "Would I have ever ended up at Texas A&M? I didn't know what Texas A&M was until they called. I didn't even know they were in the SEC. That's how much I didn't know about Texas A&M."

While Shelby had wanted to get out of the volleyball/softball grind with all the travel, this was a chance to do those sports at a Power 5 level and work with national media and national TV broadcasts.

"Another selling point at A&M was, if it wasn't volleyball or softball, I didn't have to be there," she said. "If basketball's going on, you can watch it from home or you can just come and be a fan, but you don't have to work it. Whereas at the mid-major level, if it's basketball season, you're at every game, you're on the stats crew, you're running stats. So, for me, this was work-life balance. You have to create it for yourself, nobody creates it for you."

Much like at Illinois State, there was really no room for promoting up at Texas A&M. So, with the director position open at Baylor, as the primary contact for women's basketball and women's tennis, "this was a no-brainer," she said.

"It wasn't even so much that it was the flashiness of Baylor women's basketball, it was, I get to do what I love. Basketball was the sport I played growing up. And it's a step up for me professionally and a place I knew I could continue to grow in this industry," she said.

"And for someone who's grown in their faith in the last four or five years, now I get to come to an institution where I can openly be a Christian. I don't have to feel like, 'Oh, I'm at a state school, I can't say things, or I can't do certain things.' It was just like all the stars aligned in that."

Through the interview process, Brent Ingram said he saw someone in Shelby who has "elite social skills, which is not something all of us in the industry have."

"As I started diving into Shelby's background, it was obvious that she is a future star in this business, as long as she wants to do it," Brent said. "And just a really good mission fit for us. I think more important than just her skill and ability to do the job was the way that she fit in with this group of staff members who are really elite in terms of the way they care about each other."

It was also a staff that stepped up when Shelby needed to step away for a time in November and December, when she went back to Illinois as her mom went through chemo treatments.

Diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer, Debbie was initially told by her doctor that "the prognosis isn't good," Shelby said.

"My sister and I got the call from mom the Friday before the Texas football game," Shelby said. "At first, I was like, 'I'm not going to say anything to anyone at work yet, because it's a home game, we've got too much going on.' And then, I wait. And she calls us on Sunday and says she is going to do treatments."

When Shelby asked about going home to help take care of her mom, the message she got from Brent and David Kaye, Associate AD for External Affairs, was: "We're not Baylor if we tell you that you can't go home."

While she was doing remote work from Illinois, writing press releases and tweeting during games, "I feel like it was a blessing that I was able to go home," she said.

"You talk about God's grace," Shelby said. "She had Stage 4 cancer, and she was in remission by Christmas, just three of six treatments in. Without question, 2019 had been a hard year for our family. We went through a lot and continued to experience the hardships of live over the next couple of years. But without those moments, she's not closer to the Lord, I'm not closer to my sister, I'm not closer to my mom – if God didn't move in us in 2020 and beyond . . . God was preparing us for this.

"It goes back to this: God keeps his promises."

Shelby Hild

Now, Shelby is going home, back to a familiar place and back where it all started. Her last day at Baylor being April 8, Shelby will take over the role of Assistant Commissioner for Communications at the Missouri Valley Conference office. She will oversee communication efforts with volleyball, men's soccer, women's basketball and baseball, as well as secondary communications contact for the men's basketball championship.

"I'm passionate about young people and women in sports. I'm so thankful for the perfect opportunity me to come in and sit alongside (MVC Commissioner Jeff Jackson) and everybody else on his staff and say, 'Hey, I think this would be really cool to incorporate,' with a lot more experience under my belt nine years later."

If there's anything Shelby has learned during her time in Texas, it's that God has a specific purpose in life for everyone. There's a time and a place, and all have to be willing to answer when He makes the call.

"You can't be afraid of the unknowns, or what's next," she said. "Sometimes, things don't make sense, like moving so far away from home when six hours away in Kansas City seemed like too far. But sometimes, it takes stepping out with a little bit of faith to experience the blessing of His plans for our lives."

Although she's only been a part of the Baylor staff since October 2022, Shelby says, "Working at Baylor has truly been a blessing."

"The people truly make the place. Without Baylor, I don't have the opportunity at the Missouri Valley Conference. But without the Valley, I don't end up at Baylor. It truly is a full-circle moment, and I have God to thank for that."

Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."

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