Written by Doug Goodnough
In 10 years, Sarah Klopfer, ’16, has gone from designing media guide graphics for Hillsdale College Athletics to working for the top sports media company in the world.
Less than two months into her new role as design supervisor for ESPN, Klopfer said those Hillsdale experiences led to some amazing post-graduation career opportunities, including her current one.
“It’s an opportunity for me to continually learn and elevate my understanding of the sports industry,” Klopfer said of her position at ESPN, which began in December 2025. “In this role, I am overseeing about seven show designers. They are the people who put together the graphics you see on Sportscenter and all the studio shows. It’s an incredible operation. I’m still learning.”
Arriving on the Hillsdale campus as a softball recruit from the Columbus, Ohio, area, Klopfer majored in English with an eye to becoming a sports journalist. However, when she started working part time in the Athletic Department for then-Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations and Event Management Brad Monastiere, she was introduced to the world of graphic design.
“Working with Brad in the Athletic Department, I really gravitated toward graphic design,” Klopfer said. “I remember asking Brad, ‘How do I get better at this?’ And he immediately said, ‘Take a photography class and take a graphic design class.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir,’ and I was in there the next semester. From there, I just fell in love with it.”
She credited her classes with then-Hillsdale graphic design professor Bryan Springer, ’94, and the continued work in the Athletic Department to prepare her well for her future career.
After graduating from Hillsdale, she returned to campus to complete another internship with Monastiere, eventually accepting a full-time position with a graphic design firm in the Columbus area. But a career in college athletics was her goal, and she got that opportunity in 2018 when she joined Kent State University’s athletic program as an assistant director of social media and athletic communications.
“You name it, I did it there,” Klopfer said. “That was where I really got to spread my wings and immerse myself in a D1 athletic department for the first time.”
She was handling media relations for several sports as well as overseeing the department’s social media channels and serving as the department’s lone graphic designer.
“I was doing a lot, but I loved every second of it,” she said. “I was finding myself wanting to just do the graphics. I was trying to rush through all my other work just to get to graphic design and spend more time learning that craft. I decided that if I was going to leave, it would be for something just to focus on graphic design, because I loved it so much.”
About a year later, Klopfer was hired as a graphic designer for the University of Oklahoma’s Athletic Department, which she said was the “big leagues” of college athletics.
“I was working with some major teams—the softball team, the football teams, women’s basketball,” she said. “I ended up touching pretty much every sport, everything from marketing to social media and media guides. If you can name it, we designed it, and it was incredible.”
Klopfer had a chance for a leadership role when she accepted a position as the assistant athletic director for Creative Strategy at the University of Southern Mississippi in 2021. There she helped build a creative team from scratch. That experience led to another opportunity at Mississippi State University, where she served as senior director of Creative Design. When her supervisor took a position at Oklahoma, Klopfer was asked to join her, so she returned to OU as the managing director of Creative Strategy in 2023.
She spent nearly three years helping to build out OU Athletics’ photography and graphic design teams as they supported a program that competed in the Southeastern Conference, the highest level of collegiate athletics.
Although she enjoyed her work at OU, Klopfer said an opportunity to work at ESPN was too hard to pass up.
“Something that matters to me the most is telling athletes’ stories and reaching fan bases and giving that experience at a high level,” said Klopfer, who recently moved near ESPN’s headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut. “And while this is a different world, it is also an opportunity for me to continually learn and elevate my understanding of the sports industry.”
She said she was surprised by just how large the organization was and is enjoying the community aspect of the job. Though Hillsdale was a smaller community, Klopfer remembers her Hillsdale experience fondly, both on the softball field and in the classroom.
“The on-field experience was incredible,” said Klopfer, a pitcher who was recruited by former head coach Joe Abraham. “I got to play softball at the highest level while also being a student at the highest level.”
Although her competitive softball days are over, she said, “my glove is always in the trunk of my car, ready to go. It’s almost like a security blanket.”
She enjoys hiking the trails with her dog and looks forward to seeing where her career path takes her.
“I’ve built my career on continually learning and keeping a sense of naivety,” Klopfer said. “Really, my ultimate goal is to be the best version of myself that I can be. This position opens up a whole new set of paths for me, and I’m still exploring those. I’m excited to see where that might be.”
Doug Goodnough, ’90, is Hillsdale’s senior director of Alumni Marketing. He enjoys connecting with fellow alumni in new and wonderful ways.
Published in January 2026
