The 2020 season was Kent Shelley’s 33rd and final season at the helm of the highly successful Johnson County Community College baseball program in Kansas. Shelley led his teams to a 1,075-603-1 mark while capturing four Eastern Sub-Regional championships, four NJCAA Region VI titles, three East Jayhawk Conference titles and making two NJCAA World Series appearances.
Shelley was honored in 2007 with induction into the NJCAA Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame, followed by his induction into the JCCC Athletics Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Ban Johnson League Hall of Fame in 2015.
A total of 316 student-athletes under his direction transferred to four-year institutions, while 44 of his former Cavalier players were drafted or signed as free agents by Major League teams.
In the summer of 1994, Shelley served as head coach for Team USA, a select NJCAA team from the United States that played host to a select team from Japan. The five-game series was played in Grand Junction, Colo., which is also the host site of the NJCAA World Series. In 1990, Shelley served as an assistant coach on the first NJCAA team to participate in international competition. The USA All-Stars from the NJCAA competed in the Friendship Games in Las Tunas, Cuba. He also has been selected as head coach of the Kansas Region VI Eastern Division All-Stars three times. Shelley also has the distinction of earning the first Louisville Slugger/Region VI Coach of the Year honor, after his team captured the Region VI title in 1993. In 2014, Shelley was named the East Jayhawk Conference Coach of the Year for the first time of his career.
Shelley has been active on both the national and international levels of junior college baseball. In 1997 at the ABCA Convention, he was selected as ABCA's Junior College Divisional Chair, representing Junior College on the ABCA Executive Committee. In addition, he served on the International Baseball Committee for the ABCA. He has also represented the NJCAA Baseball Coaches Association on the NCAA Division I baseball rules committee.
In 2002, Shelley was elected 4th Vice President of the ABCA, following legend Charlie Greene of Miami-Dade Community College as just the second coach from the community college ranks to earn such an honor. He served as ABCA President in 2007 and continues to serve on the ABCA Board of Directors.
In addition to his coaching duties at JCCC, Shelley also served as an associate scout for the Kansas City Royals.
