During his high school football career, he earned first-team all-state honors and was named as "the finest prep lineman in the state" by the Des Moines Register.
During his senior season, he played right tackle with All-American guard Ed Bock on the 1938 "Cyclone Eleven" squad that produced a 7-1-1 record for coach Jim Yeager.
Shugart earned all-Big Six Conference honors[2] and received All-America board recognition, playing all but 20 minutes of the entire season.
The Redskins then beat the Bears in the 1942 NFL Championship game, 14-6, before a sellout crowd of 36,000 at Griffith Stadium.
[2] After retiring from football, Shugart took a job as a manager of a High's Ice Cream branch plant in Baltimore, Maryland.