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Tuesday, March 19
The Indiana Daily Student

sports baseball

IU senior maintaining close relationship with childhood nanny

spNolden

A mother and her almost-2-year-old son make their way through the gates at Target Field. Devon and Will Bumgarner made the trip from Kansas City to watch the Big Ten Baseball Tournament in Minneapolis and are here Friday morning for an elimination game between Iowa and IU.

As soon as the two walk through the entrance gates, Will gets restless. He wants to go play on the field.

Will keeps asking, “Can I play with Big Will? Can I play with Big Will?”

Eventually, Devon and Will reach their seats behind the third base dugout, changing Will’s focus to the field. “In? In?” Will repeats, motioning toward the field, wanting to go play.

Three hours later, Will gets his wish. He makes his way onto the field and plays with Big Will, more commonly known as Will Nolden, a senior right fielder for IU.

“I’m very close with them,” Nolden said about Devon and Will. “She’s been to probably eight or ten games this season. She’s traveled across the country to watch me play, and she’s brought Will with her. It’s just been really cool.”

***

The story of Nolden, Bumgarner and Will dates to 23 years ago back in Indianapolis. At that point, Nolden was just three months old.

He needed a nanny, and that’s where Devon came in. For the next 10 years, she was Nolden’s nanny, spending countless hours with him, even traveling with the Noldens on vacation. In many ways, she was much more than a nanny to Nolden.

“She’s been as close with my family, and my family has been as close with their family as any of my direct relatives,” Nolden said.

Devon was a direct influence on Nolden through his younger years, watching him fall in love with the game of baseball. She experienced Nolden as a crazy child who couldn’t sit still. “A little stinker,” Devon called him.

“He was just very all over the place and just constantly wanted to run around,” Devon said. “I had to go everywhere with him.”

Nolden has always been full of energy, Devon said. He’s always wanted to be moving, moving forward toward achieving something.

Nothing is unattainable for Nolden, Devon said. No task, no job, nothing is out of reach. He just works too hard, she said.

“He was very strong-willed since he was little,” Devon said. “He just puts his mind to something and follows through. Ever since he was little, he’s just worked so hard and said ‘I’m not going to be that lazy kid ever,’ and he never has.”

So, when Devon had her first child, she had an easy decision for what her son would be named. Her son’s name would be Will, the same as the boy she helped raise and is now watching compete in the Big Ten Tournament.

But Nolden wasn’t immediately aware of this.

“It was after the birth I found out,” Nolden said. “It was a really, really cool experience. I was obviously really excited she was having a kid in the first place and then to find out she was naming it after me, I was honored.”

***

Bumgarner has been to each of Nolden’s Big Ten Tournaments during his time as a Hoosier and makes trips to Bloomington during the season to watch him play.

This season, Devon and Will have come to see him play multiple times, Nolden said.

“It means a lot,” Nolden said. “It’s crazy because she’s been doing it my whole career.”

Little Will is also full of energy at each game, resembling Nolden as a child: never able to sit still.

“It’s cool to see him in the stands running around, and I can hear him yelling ‘Big Will’ at me,” Nolden said.

Nolden said he can’t hear Will during his at-bats, but when he’s on defense, patrolling right field at Bart Kaufman Field, he can hear Will loud and clear.

“Big Will! Big Will!” Little Will yells from the area beyond the right field fence. He doesn’t just yell this when he’s at games either. When Devon and Will watch games on television at home in Iowa or listen on the radio, he still yells for Big Will.

For Devon, the decision to make the trips is easy, just like the decision of naming her son Will. After all the time and emotion she’s invested into Nolden, the experience is too special to pass up.

Watching Nolden play at Target Field, a major league ballpark, and step into the same left-handed batters box that Joe Mauer does three to four times a game is special, Bumgarner said.

“It makes me sort of, even though I’m not a parent, sort of proud,” Devon said. “I love watching him, and it’s just been really cool watching him grow up and seeing everything he’s gone through.”

***

As Will makes it over the wall dividing the stands from Target Field and into Nolden’s arms, Devon said she couldn’t help but feel emotional.

“It’s so cool,” she said. “It’s so neat. Like I can’t even tell you. It’s just such a cool thing being able to have him here watching him when I got to watch him when he was little. It’s really neat, I love it.”

At two years old, Will doesn’t necessarily understand baseball yet, just that the sport involves Big Will.

For Will, being with Nolden is enough.

As Nolden holds Will in his hands, gently throwing him into the air and catching him, he sees the excitement flash across Will’s face.

Eventually, Nolden said, he hopes to play catch with Will and introduce him to the game that has had such a large effect on his life.

“I don’t know how much of an influence I’ll have, but maybe him just being at the games will get him excited to play the sport,” Nolden said. “Hopefully I’ll get him to play catch here soon.”

For now, just being with Big Will is enough excitement for Little Will. After the Big Ten Tournament ended, Devon and Will went home to Kansas City, and Nolden went back to Bloomington to prepare for IU’s upcoming regional in Nashville, Tenn.

Nolden doesn’t think Devon and Will can make the trip, he said. The next time he can see Little Will again might be at the College World Series.

“The goal is to keep moving on further and hopefully make it an easy trip for them out in Omaha,” he said.

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