Commitment to Service Puts Bavin in Class of Her Own

By Jeff White (jwhite@virginia.edu)
VirginiaSports.com

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Even those who’ve known her for years marvel at how much Shelby Bavin packs into each day. Consider some of her activities:

* Student in an accelerated master’s program in the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

* Coxswain on the UVA rowing team.

* Volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician (EMT) at the Seminole Trail Volunteer Fire Department (Station 8) in Albemarle County.

* Student leader in UVA’s chapter of Athletes in Action.

* Co-leader of UVA’s Operation Christmas Child initiative.

* Co-leader of Bible study group on the rowing team.

* Student-athlete coach in the Run Charlottesville program.

“I don’t know if she sleeps,” said former Virginia football standout Connor Hughes, one of the leaders of the Athletes in Action ministry on Grounds.

Bavin has heard many versions of that sentence. “I definitely do sleep,” she said, laughing.

Maybe so, but she doesn’t have much down time during her waking hours. And that’s fine with Bavin, who as an undergraduate majored in global security and justice, with a minor in Middle Eastern studies.

“All the things that I do, there are some spots where they conflict with each other, but for the most part they don't overlap too much,” she said, “and I'm able to use each of the different activities I do to kind of balance each other out. When I'm rowing, I can just focus on rowing. It's a break from school and firefighting. And then when I'm firefighting, it's a break from school and rowing.”

Bavin has logged more than 2,000 hours at Station 8, and her commitment to serving others earned her a prestigious honor early this month, when she was named captain of the Allstate NACDA Spring Good Works Team for 2025-26.

The team comprises 20 collegiate student-athletes—10 men and 10 women—who have made exceptional contributions in their communities.

“Shelby’s a gem,” former UVA head rowing coach Kevin Sauer said. “It’s amazing what she’s done.”

Bavin, who earned her bachelor’s degree this month, is the first volunteer firefighter/ EMT to be chosen as captain of an Allstate NACDA Good Works Team. She knew she’d named to the team, but had no idea she’d been selected as captain until April 21, when ESPN commentator Holly Rowe, with a film crew in tow, surprised Bavin in the Harrison Family Olympic Sports Facility weight room.

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Holly Rowe (@sportsiren)

“Just to be recognized on that large national stage by someone as significant as Holly Rowe for women's sports was pretty awesome,” Virginia head rowing coach Wesley Ng said.

Heidi VanderHoef Gunn, director of career development for UVA Athletics, nominated Bavin for the Good Works Team. Gunn uses Helper Helper, an app that tracks community service hours put in by student-athletes and teams, and she saw that Bavin had few peers in that regard.

“She’s way up there,” Gunn said.

Among those on hand for Rowe’s visit were Bavin’s teammates and UVA staffers, including director of athletics Carla Williams. Also watching proudly were four of her colleagues from Station 8: Jordan Brown, a captain, and his wife, Tania, a released firefighter; duty chief Jeff Bozzone; and fellow volunteer firefighter Charlie Murphy. Also a UVA student, Murphy is Bavin’s best friend.

“That was the biggest shock,” Bavin said of seeing the Station 8 group, “because they're really like family. The rowing team is a big part of my family, and then in the fire service, I have that family too. It’s a little bit different, because we've done so much hard stuff and seen so many hard things together. So it was really special that they were there.”

Bavin, confused about what was happening, was not the picture of composure at first as Rowe presented her with a ceremonial captain’s jacket.

“My team was not surprised, because I had this reaction at our senior night, too, where I get a little emotional,” Bavin said. “I do this laughing and crying thing. My team knows that that's my genuine reaction.”

A graduate of Alexandria City High School, Bavin arrived on Grounds in the summer of 2022 and joined the rowing team. Sauer was in charge of the program then, and this phrase became the Cavaliers’ mantra: entitled to nothing, grateful for everything.

 “You earn what you get and you’re grateful for what you have,” Sauer said. “So if you’re grateful for what you have, you gotta look around and see that there’s a lot of people that don’t have, so let’s try to help those that don’t. So we tried to do that a lot, and they still do. Wes supports that as well.”

Sauer, who has volunteered at Meals on Wheels for 20 years, urged his rowers to perform the most community service of any team at UVA over the course of each year. “Look for ways to give back, because we’re pretty fortunate,” he said. “And Shelby has done that in spades.”

Her grandfather, Clark Bavin, was chief of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Division of Law Enforcement from 1972 until his death in 1990. His commitment to service inspired his granddaughter, as did the example set by the Sauers: Kevin and his wife, Barb.

“They’ve both mentored me,” Bavin said. “Kevin brought me into the program, which I'm super grateful for, and just from day one Virginia was always about service. Kevin always was like, ‘Yes, we want to win but we want to win by also being like good people who go out into the community and serve,’ and I think that he just really instilled that in me.

“Faith is also a huge part of my life. I do a lot of stuff with Athletes in Action. And so I think that also inspires me just to really go serve others and love your neighbor. And I just really try to live by that.”

With Athletes in Action, Hughes said, if “it’s happening, Shelby wants to be part of it, which is really special. She’s a person that I know, if I have something, I can trust her.”

Growing up, Bavin was a Girl Scout and had done some volunteer work in Northern Virginia, but she didn’t discover firefighting until she got to UVA.

“I didn't really do much my first year besides rowing,” Bavin said, “and I think when your whole identity is in your sport and nothing else, it's just very consuming and it's not very fulfilling. And I think I just was really looking for an outlet where I could go and give back to a community that's given a lot to me, and I was inspired by Kevin and other people on my team. So I heard one of my friends talking about volunteer firefighting, and then one of my old coaches, Morgan [Baynham-Williams], she was a firefighter.

“And so I just kept hearing the word firefighter in like a bunch of different places. And I was like, ‘OK, maybe I'll go try it out.’ And so I went and did a ride. I started the ride-along process at Seminole in my second-year fall. Once I was there and I saw how it worked, I just took it and ran with it.”

Firefighting allows her “to serve the community in such an impactful way,” Bavin said. “It really is a blessing to be able to go and help people on what is probably the worst day of their lives in a lot of cases.”

Jordan Brown is Bavin’s director supervisor at the Seminole Trail Volunteer Fire Department, which is located on Berkmar Drive, not far from the UVA rowing team’s boathouse on the Rivanna Reservoir.

“There are a few special individuals at the station, and she’s definitely one of them,” Brown said. “We call them go-getters, so she’s always a go-getter when it comes to training, when it comes to working hard to reach the next step, to reach another promotion or to advance herself.”

Bavin was recently promoted from rookie firefighter to released firefighter, Brown said, and she’s begun “training newer firefighters and showing them the ropes.”

 

 

 

 

 

View this post on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A post shared by Virginia Cavaliers (@virginiasports)

During the spring semester, Brown said, she had at least one 12-hour shift (6 p.m. Wednesday to 6 a.m. Thursday) at the station each week. “And then every five weeks we do a weekend shift.”

Sometimes she’s able to sneak in several hours of sleep during her shift, but not always, if there are fire calls. “Sometimes it's a tough turnaround, but I wake up, I take my stuff off the truck at 6, and then I'll grab something really quick to eat,” Bavin said. “Sometimes I'll get a coffee if I need it, and then I'll go straight to [rowing[ practice. Luckily, the boathouse is only like two minutes from the station, so it's a pretty easy drive.”

She sees parallels between her responsibilities in a boat and on a fire truck.

“There's a big leadership aspect in the fire service similar to being a coxswain,” Bavin said, “because clear direction is very important. You have to be very clear about what you need your crew to do, what resources you need, where to go. The difference between rowing and firefighting is, with firefighting you're putting your life on the line, quite literally. Every day we are doing that. And so you have to be able to make hard decisions under pressure and very quickly. And I think similarly, I do that with coxing as well.

“You have to clearly communicate. And one thing they always tell the coxswains when we're doing training is that you need to be thinking a few strokes ahead. You should know what you're saying a few strokes ahead. You’re ahead of what's happening. And the same kind of goes for firefighting. You need to think about what might happen so that it doesn't or so that it does when it needs to.”

For medical reasons, Bavin is redshirting this season, but she’s looking forward to competing again for the Wahoos as a graduate student in 2026-27. Her master’s program in the Batten School runs through the next spring.

Bavin impressed Ng in 2024-25, his first year as head coach at Virginia.

“She’s an incredibly committed, diligent, passionate athlete,” he said.

To receive Jeff White’s articles by email, click the appropriate box in this link to subscribe.