By Sean Fowler
McHenry Times
An athlete who has won almost every award there is to win in freestyle wrestling now makes his home in Huntley, working to raise a new generation of not only great wrestlers, but also hard workers.

[caption id="attachment_13423" align="alignright" width="200"] Lee Kemp is pictured on one of our Character Trait walls and is featured for Commitment.[/caption]

"Wrestling builds character and teaches many things, but one thing it teaches is self-confidence. It teaches you to believe in yourself because when you compete in wrestling, it is just you and your opponent out there on the mat, and nobody else can help you," Leroy "Lee" Kemp told the McHenry Times. "You must do this yourself, so wrestling teaches self-reliance."

Kemp, who was inducted as a Distinguished Member in 1990, is nothing less than a legend in the world of freestyle wrestling. Kemp began wrestling as a high school freshman and went undefeated while winning two Ohio state titles his last two years. In between high school and college, Kemp was one of only four American Junior wrestlers who achieved a dual meet win in a match against the Junior Soviet team, which was on a tour of the U.S. Kemp also won the Junior National Freestyle Tournament in the same year.

Kemp went on to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a four-time NCAA finalist, finishing second as a freshman before winning three straight national titles while going 143-6-1, with victories in 96 consecutive matches and an unbeaten string of 109 in a row. Perhaps an even bigger accomplishment was winning a match against wrestling legend Dan Gable, who was older and more experienced, and making a run at the Olympics. Defeating Gable, who was inducted as a Distinguished Member in 1980, truly established Kemp as a legend in the making.

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