Recent graduate and Miss Colorado Collegiate 2025, Ashlyn Nogare Drury learned how to blend her passion for sports photography with pageant success. She’s used both platforms to inspire others while chasing her Major League Baseball dreams.
The baseball was coming in fast, right down the center. Ashlyn Nogare Drury crouched behind home plate, camera ready, waiting for that perfect moment when bat would meet ball. The world narrowed to just her viewfinder and the action unfolding before her. This was her element. She was capturing the split second that tells a story. A story where the camera captures the athletic artistry that most people missed in the blur of a game.
A few months later, Drury found herself in an entirely different arena. Standing on stage in a white gown at the Miss Collegiate America pageant, her heart racing as she scanned the crowd of hundreds, looking for her mother’s face among the spectators. The announcer’s voice echoed through the venue as names were called for the top five. When they announced her name, the same laser focus that served her behind the camera kicked in.
“Your heart’s beating at this point and your mind, you’re overthinking, like, ‘how am I going to answer this on-stage question?’” Drury said during a recent Zoom interview from her home.
That on-stage moment crystallized everything she’d been working toward. After 13 years of competing in pageants and four years honing her skills at CSU Pueblo, Drury placed third at the national competition in July 2025, earning the title of second runner-up. For this recent graduate with a Bachelor’s of Science in Media and Entertainment Strategic Communications, the real victory was how the experience brought together all the threads of her story.
How She Found Her Voice Through Two Lenses
Drury’s path to this moment began when she was just 10 years old. She was inspired watching her cousin compete in the Miss Pueblo scholarship pageant. n She already loved performing. She was a cheerleader and gymnast at her family’s gym. Pageantry evolved into something deeper.
“I started pageants for the fun of being on the stage,” she said. “Over the years, it helped me with my public speaking and it helped me find my passions.”
The pageant world gave her confidence and a platform. Photography gave her a different kind of voice. During her sophomore year at CSU Pueblo, Drury made what she calls an “investment” in her education and passions by using scholarship refund money to buy professional camera equipment. The Kane Scholarship recipient, along with additional scholarships that covered her tuition, suddenly found herself living a split existence.
“There’s a handful of pictures of me standing in my uniform with my camera on the sidelines,” she laughed, describing how she would cheer half the games and photograph the other half. ” That’s when I knew that my passion for sports media and sports photography really took off.”
The dual role was fitting for someone who carries both her parents’ names—Nogare from her mother, Drury from her father—because she believes in honoring the people who shaped her story.
Behind the Camera; In Front of the Crown
From that early experimentation, Drury’s role expanded. She became the creative media specialist for the baseball team, then for the entire athletic department, running social media accounts and documenting the stories of CSU Pueblo athletes. Her senior project was a deep dive into storytelling, profiling four athletes to show “they’re more than athletes.”
Photography taught her about capturing moments that would never happen exactly the same way again. Pageants taught her about presence and the power of connecting with an audience. Both required the same essential skill: seeing what others might miss. It’s something she kept in mind when asked pageantry questions.
“When I’m responding, I try to think, look at the judges, look up at the crowd, enjoy the moment, and speak slowly. Don’t fumble the word that you’re about to say,” she said, describing her on-stage question moment at nationals. “My mind was going so fast, but I took a deep breath and it was one of the first times that I felt present on that stage.”
The question they asked was about traits Miss Collegiate America should hold. Drury’s answer wove together leadership, storytelling, and community involvement. Essential themes which run through her life like a golden thread.
Dreams in Motion
Now Drury has her sights set on a job with Major League Baseball, applying for positions that typically open at the end of the season with hopes of working spring training. She’s also applied to the PGA Tour and Major League Soccer, especially with the World Cup approaching. Sports media has always been the goal, sparked by watching her brother play baseball during family trips and falling in love with “the pace of the game because you can get artistic shots of it.”
But she’s also building something of her own. Currently creating her company, Drury runs a photography business focusing on family photos, senior portraits, and life’s milestone moments. The long-term vision is even bigger—a one-stop shop that combines photography with her esthetician license earned in high school, offering makeup, spray tanning, and photography services.
She thought of adding artistry instead of photography to the title because she sees what she does as do more than provide a service. For her, it’s the art of makeup, videography and photography, she explained.
The Community Connection
Throughout the interview, Drury rarely used the word “I.” She spoke in terms of “you” and “we,” constantly redirecting focus to others. It wasn’t false modesty. It was authentic to someone whose pageant platform, “Think Before,” encourages others to be “brave, be bold, be you, and be your own kind of beautiful.”
“Most of the time my own stories are not to help myself or to share about myself, but it’s to encourage the little girls who are looking up to me,” she said. “The reason I feel like I always use you or a general statement is to put the little girl looking up to me in the perspective that she can achieve this too.”
Drury speaks in elementary school classrooms, where kids ask if she’s a princess because of her sparkly crown. She always tells them no, she does pageants, then explains what that means encouraging them to dream big as they have the ability to pursue their dreams.
When asked about her voice shifting during the interview—becoming more animated and joyful when discussing photography compared to the polished responses when discussing the pageants, Drury paused. She face grew pensive. Behind all the training and years of practiced poise was someone who genuinely lit up when talking about catching that perfect shot of a ball suspended in air, or seeing a family photo she took displayed proudly on a professor’s office wall.
She explains that she loves being able to give people a slice of their life they can relive by looking at her photos.
That might summarize Drury’s approach to everything she does. Whether she’s behind the camera at a baseball game or standing on stage in a white gown, the goal is the same: help others see themselves, capture the moments that matter, and create space for people to shine their own light.
With applications pending for spring training positions and her business growing, Drury is writing the next chapter of a story that began with a 10-year-old watching her cousin on stage. The settings may change, but the mission remains constant—using whatever platform she has, whether it’s behind the lens or center stage, to help others believe in their own possibilities.
