Cloud County Sports Information
CONCORDIA - Cloud County Community College has selected two members to be enshrined as the 16th Cloud County Athletics Hall of Fame class, which will be inducted the afternoon of Feb. 18 when the basketball teams host Coffeyville Community College.
The two Cloud County greats who will be honored that afternoon are Jared Goedert and Kyle Doperalski.
A Concordia native and 2003 graduate of Concordia High School, Goedert was a 36th-round selection by the Cleveland Indians out of high school before opting to spend the 2004 season as a Cloud County T-Bird. While at CCCC, Goedert hit .431 and set a then-school record with 77 hits while striking out just 13 times in 178 at-bats. An All-Kansas Jayhawk Community College Conference and All-NJCAA Region VI selection, Goedert would be named Honorable-Mention All-American before going on to transfer to Kansas State University where he would spend two years with the Wildcats.
Following his time at K-State, Goedert would be a ninth-round selection of the Cleveland Indians (281st overall draft pick) in the 2006 Major League Baseball Draft and began his professional career with the Mahoning Valley Scrappers. The 2007 season would see Goedert play for the Lake County Captains and Kinston Indians as he led the entire Indians minor league system in walk percentage (16.4 percent of plate appearances) and on-base percentage (.430).
Goedert would spend the entire 2008 season with the Kinston Indians before starting the 2009 season with the Akron Aeros where he would spend the entire season in Akron. The 2010 and 2011 seasons would see Goedert split time with the AA Akron Aeros and AAA Columbus Clippers. In his final two seasons as a player, Goedert would remain in AAA spending the 2013 season with the Indianapolis Indians (Pittsburgh Pirates affiliate) and the 2014 season with the Buffalo Bisons (Toronto Blue Jays affiliate). In total, Goedert would play in 923 minor league games and record 904 hits with 123 home runs and 522 runs driven in along with an on-base percentage of .349.
Most recently, Goedert served as manager of the Frisco RoughRiders, AA affiliate of the Texas Rangers where he would lead the team to a 74-63 record and the second Texas League Championship in franchise history. Goedert would also be named Texas League Manager of the Year to become the first RoughRiders manager named Manager of the Year since Jason Wood in 2014. In total, Goedert spent seven seasons as an assistant coach in the Rangers farm system, coaching for the Spokane Indians (2016, 2018), AZL rangers (2017), Hickory Crawdads (2019), and Frisco Roughriders (2021-2022)
Doperalski was a cross country and track and field standout for the T-Birds from 2000-2002, earning NJCAA All-American status five times and setting two school records for the T-Birds. After earning a 20th-place finish at the 2000 NJCAA Division II Cross Country Championship meet, Doperalski would go on to finish fourth at the 2001 National Championship meet while helping the T-Birds to a seventh-place team finish. Following his time at Cloud County, Doperalski would transfer to the University of Nebraska and was an All-Big 12 performer in track while the Huskers claimed four Big 12 Championships during his collegiate years.
Following his graduation from Nebraska in 2005, Doperalski would spend two years in the private sector in Lincoln, Nebraska before moving to Las Cruces, N.M., where he would spend six years with New Mexico State University. During his time in Las Cruces, Doperalski would develop and implement the television network "Aggie Vision", which provided regular live coverage of football, men's and women's basketball, baseball, softball, and volleyball. In 2008, Doperalski was recognized as the top national volleyball broadcaster by the American Volleyball Coaches Association in the annual Grant Berger Media Awards. The New Mexico Rivals.com site honored Doperalski as the 2012 New Mexico Sports Executive of the Year for putting together the state-wide high school football live radio shows.
Doperalski would be named the Associate Athletics Director for External Operations at the University of North Dakota in 2012, a role which saw him lead the offices of communications, marketing, broadcast properties, video production, and licensing in addition to serving as sport supervisor for the track and field and cross country program. While with the Fighting Hawks, Doperalski would increase sponsorship revenue by 350 percent from 2012-2016 before helping negotiate a second-tier television rights contract worth 1.425 million with Midco Sports Network. Other duties that Doperalski would serve while at UND would include the negotiation of the first department-wide apparel contract with Adidas along with leading North Dakota's game management efforts from 2012-2018 which included serving as tournament director for two conference tournaments and three NCAA Hockey Regional Tournaments.
Most recently, Doperalski would be named the assistant executive director with the Kansas State High School Activities Association in July of 2022 where he serves as the administrator for cross country, basketball, and track and field.
The induction ceremony for the 16th Cloud County Athletics Hall of Fame class will be held at halftime of the men's basketball game against Coffevyille Community College on Feb. 18. Action gets underway that afternoon at 2 p.m. with the women's game. The men's game will follow at 4 p.m. as the festivities will be held as part of CCCC's 2023 homecoming.