PrepZone: School district athletic director Joe Kemper retiring

In his heart, Joe Kemper still was a college coach when he arrived in Naples.

Kemper was 29 when he started as a math teacher and swimming coach at Barron Collier High School, but he already had five years experience coaching in the NCAA. His stop in Naples was just going to be a rest stop on the road to another college job.

It’s 33 years later, and Kemper still hasn’t left. Instead he fully committed himself to making Collier County the best it can be, first as an educator and coach, then as an athletic director, and finally as the school district’s first overarching coordinator of athletics.

Kemper, 61, is retiring this year. After working for three decades to help coaches and student-athletes, Kemper’s glad he stuck around.

“This place is easy to fall in love with,” Kemper said. “I couldn’t have landed in a better place. I’m very fortunate I ended up here.”

Achievements as AD

After coaching 15 years for the Cougars, then one year at Naples High, Kemper served as Barron Collier’s athletic director from 2000-07. His biggest contributions to area sports came after Collier County Public Schools created a district-wide athletic director position, overseeing all high school and middle school athletics, in 2007.

Kemper started as the district’s first Coordinator of Interscholastic Athletics in 2007. The position was created because the district was starting sports at its middle schools. Kemper also was in charge of creating a random drug-testing policy and program when he started.

The drug-testing program remains today, selecting about 1,000 athletes from the county’s eight public high schools each year to test for recreational and performance-enhancing substances.

“The program has proved to be useful and helpful,” said Ken Andiorio, the current Barron Collier athletic director who started coaching at the school in 1994. “It sends the right message.”

The message is deterrence, Kemper said. The goal is not to catch students using drugs but to give them a reason to not use them. Kemper said about 1 to 2 percent of the tests are positive for drugs each school year.

Among his other accomplishments as district AD, Kemper created a concussion management program for athletes and a coaching certification plan.

In 2011, the district began requiring athletes to take a baseline test of their cognitive abilities before their sport to compare to results of the same test if there is a suspected concussion. That came a year before the Florida High School Athletic Association began requiring concussion testing.

Related story: Collier county adopts new concussion action plan

Anyone who’s been to a football game at one of the district’s high schools can see Kemper’s work. He researched synthetic turf when the district decided to install the surfaces on all seven football fields beginning in 2008.

Related story: New synthetic turf a hot topic for local schools

“Joe really was able to help out everyone (as district AD),” said former Barron Collier and Golden Gate basketball coach Joe Consolino. “Joe always listened to everybody, which is a real attribute for anyone in charge of a large group. He was always fair in everything.”

Kemper's replacement

Kemper’s position – now called Coordinator of Interscholastic Athletics, Activities and Drivers’ Education – will be filled by another former Barron Collier athletic director, Mark Rosenbalm.

Rosenbalm spent the past three years as an assistant principal at Corkscrew Middle School, but before that he spent 20 years in athletics. 

He coached football, wrestling, golf and track and Gulf Coast and Palmetto Ridge before becoming Barron Collier’s AD in 2009.

“They can never take athletics out of ya,” Rosenbalm said about returning to sports. “This is an opportunity that doesn’t happen often. I’m very excited and fortunate to receive this position.”

Rosenbalm might be best known as a wrestling coach. He was Palmetto Ridge’s first head wrestling coach when the school opened in 2004. Three years later Rosenbalm led the Bears to the Class 1A state championship.

Working in the district since 1999, Rosenbalm said he hopes to continue Kemper’s legacy and, like his predecessor, continue to expand on Collier County sports.

“I want to carry on the excellent tradition we have in athletics and improve them as much as I can,” Rosenbalm said.

A coach and educator

Kemper was an assistant boys basketball coach under Consolino, and later a head girls and boys coach. But he started his athletic career as an All-American diver.

After graduating from Bellbrook High School in Dayton, Ohio, in 1973, Kemper attended Youngstown State. As a diver, he was named the Penguins’ MVP in 1977, when he was an All-American in the 1- and 3-meter dives.

In 1999, Kemper was inducted into the Youngstown State Athletics Hall of Fame.

Kemper began coaching at his alma mater in 1979 and became Youngstown State’s men’s and women’s head swimming coach in 1981. When a new athletic director took over in 1984 and decided to eliminate men’s swimming at Youngstown, Kemper decided to head south.

He and another recently-unemployed Youngstown State coach drove all over Florida in June 1984, handing out resumes and looking for jobs. About six weeks later Barron Collier called looking for a math teacher and swimming coach.

Kemper coached the Cougars’ swim teams from 1984-99. At Barron Collier he also was the head girls basketball coach (1988-90 and 1998-99) and boys basketball assistant (1991-98). He was Naples High’s head boys basketball coach for one season (1999-2000), before becoming Barron Collier’s AD.

In his time as coach, Kemper led the Barron Collier swimming team to three district championships and had three relay teams win state titles. As Youngstown State’s coach, Kemper’s teams set 28 school records and he had five NCAA Division II All-Americans.

Kemper is equally as proud of his 16 years as a math teacher in the district (1984-2000).

As his career winds down to his last day, June 22, and he looks back, Kemper is awful happy he never got that second college coaching job.

“It’s amazing how fast time has gone by,” Kemper said. “I’ve made a lot of amazing friends here, some lifelong friends. I’m very fortunate to work for such a great school district. I’m proud of my time here.”