Takedown Report

Lee Kemp: A Story of Almosts

By Robert Chappell
It’s easy to get hyperbolic about athletes. Easy to overstate their greatness, easy to claim “best ever” in profiles, career retrospectives, and documentaries.
This is not one of those profiles.
Lee Kemp is one of the greatest. Ever.
Kemp’s incredible career in wrestling — now the subject of a documentary film, Wrestled Away: The Lee Kemp Story — is one of almosts: a few big things that almost didn’t happen, and one huge thing that almost did. Those who are even tangentially connected to the sport know his name, but because of a political decision made nearly 40 years ago, the rest of America doesn’t.
Almost Basketball
Leroy Kemp Jr. was not his name at first; it was Darnell Freeman until he was adopted by Leroy and Jessie Kemp at the age of five. Growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, he was surrounded by blackness and basketball — and, eventually, racial strife and violence, which prompted the family to relocate to the small community of Chardon, Ohio.
That was the first of the almosts.
“Had I stayed in Cleveland, I actually would not have wrestled,” Kemp says in an interview from his home in northern California. “It just would not have been a sport that would have even been in my mind or in my environment. It wouldn’t have been something I would have thought about.”
But his new hometown was small, mostly white, and mostly agricultural — the kind of town where wrestling thrives. “The only black people I saw were my mom and dad and the people that lived on Clark Road,” Kemp says. “The only places that were available were on this one road, because white families started to move off the road when black people started moving on, so it just served as a nice place for black people who wanted to have a country lifestyle.”
Kemp was one of only two black kids in his junior high school, where he first took up basketball, the sport he’d grown up around. It didn’t go well, and he rarely got off the bench.
“In two years, I think I maybe played five minutes,” he recalls. “I scored two points, because any time I’d get the ball, I’d just shoot it.” When he got to high school and joined the freshman basketball team, he didn’t even get put in for scrimmages. He’d had enough.
“I felt frustrated that I couldn’t play, and that frustration built up to me wanting to try something different,” he says. “On the way to basketball practice, one of the days of that first week that the season started [in ninth grade], I just walked by the wrestling room and stopped and just stared into the window watching the wrestlers practice. And I missed basketball practice that day because I just watched the whole wrestling practice.” Missing practice meant getting kicked off the basketball team, which worked out just fine.
“The wrestling coach welcomed me with open arms into the wrestling room,” he says. That coach told him the freshman team didn’t have anyone else in the 138-pound class, which was about what Kemp weighed at that time.
“That sounded really appealing to me. I thought, ‘Well, I’m going to be the guy,’” he says. “And, sure enough, I went out, and then two weeks later, I’m out there with a wrestling uniform on, wrestling, and I won my match. And that feeling of exhilaration, of winning one-on-one, was amazing.” He lost only twice that year, won the conference title for freshmen, then made varsity as a sophomore. His second year was a little tougher, as he moved down to the 132-pound weight class, which meant taking on extra workouts while wearing multiple layers, restricting calories, and wrestling more experienced competition. He went 11–8–3, and he wanted to do better.
A Turning Point
In the summer of 1972, after Kemp’s sophomore year, there were few wrestlers more famous than Dan Gable. The Iowa State alum already had two NCAA championships and one world freestyle title, and he was America’s hope to best the unbeatable Russians for an Olympic gold medal at the Munich games. He dominated the Olympic trials, pinning three of four opponents on his way to the Olympic team. And he made an appearance at a camp that summer — a camp that Kemp attended.
He left quite an impression.
“Dan Gable was, I mean, he was everybody’s, I don’t know, legend, idol, whatever,” Kemp says. “We all knew of Dan Gable. So to have him at that camp had such a huge impact on me [and] my psyche.”
Gable went on to win that Olympic gold, which Kemp watched at home on ABC’s Wide World of Sports.
“I started to try to figure out a way that I could train like him, and hopefully be like him,” Kemp says. “And that training translated into me becoming a two-time state champion. I didn’t lose a match after that.”
That’s right — after deciding to train like the great Dan Gable, Kemp never lost again in high school. That success, of course, caught the attention of college recruiters — which is another one of those “almost” moments. Kemp almost didn’t come to Wisconsin.
“Some Cleveland wrestlers that I knew, older Cleveland wrestlers that I looked up to, went to Michigan State,” he recalls. “I just felt like I wanted to go there, just from that. I went there, and I had a good recruiting trip, and it just was a place I felt like I wanted to go to.”
But Michigan State wasn’t able to offer a full scholarship, so Kemp’s father told him to keep looking. Then came John Grantham, a family friend and businessman in Kemp’s hometown, who encouraged him to visit UW–Madison. Meanwhile at the UW, athletic director Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch had instructed wrestling coach Duane Kleven to make a run at the state champ from Ohio. … Rest of this fascinating story about a great, classy champion at https://madison365.com/lee-kemp-a-story-of-almosts/?mc_cid=e68db38422&mc_eid=2ef7cbca4b

January 16, 2020 - Posted by The TakeDown Report | Uncategorized