Mike Kemp


Mike Kemp is an American associate athletic director and former ice hockey head coach for the men's program at Omaha.

Career

Mike Kemp began his coaching career with Division III Gustavus Adolphus, his alma mater, in 1976. After five seasons with the Golden Gusties he moved on to Wisconsin as an assistant for one season. After a year-long stint with Illinois-Chicago he returned to Madison and remained with the program for thirteen years, helping the Badgers to a national title in 1990.
In the summer of 1996 Nebraska–Omaha, who had announced the intention of sponsoring a Division I program beginning in 1997–98, hired Kemp as the team's first head coach. The Mavericks got started as an Independent and after two foreseeably poor seasons they were accepted into the CCHA in 1999. Two years into their conference experience, Kemp got the Mavericks to post their first winning season, going 24–15–3, earning a final ranking as the #13 team in the country and just narrowly missing the NCAA tournament.
After another 20+ win season the Mavericks went into the tank for a pair of years before Kemp was able to pull them out of it and get the team to hover around the.500 mark for five seasons. Kemp got the Mavericks their first berth in the tournament in 2006 with his third 20+ win season but unfortunately wasn't able to push them past #1 seed Boston University. The following offseason Kemp was offered the position of Athletic Director with the university but turned it down when he determined that he couldn't be both head coach and AD at the same time. Two years later Kemp stepped down as head coach to accept a position as associate AD, clearing the way for 2-time national champion Dean Blais to take over the program.
Kemp was inducted into the Omaha Hockey Hall of Fame in 2010.

Head caching record