After father’s death, Utah teen continues his legacy in football

After father’s death, Utah teen continues his legacy in football

(Karen Martin)


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LAYTON — A Utah teen used his father’s example to motivate and inspire him to receive a full-ride scholarship to play college football.

Marcus Kemp began playing football when he was 6 years old. His mother, Karen Martin, encouraged him and his younger brother to participate in the sport as a way to connect with their father, who died when Kemp was 3 years old.

Marcus Kemp’s father, Ronald Kemp, played as a wide receiver and safety at Dixie College in 1993-94. Ronald Kemp took a break from school to work and support his family, but he had dreams of making it to the NFL, Martin said. At 25, Ronald suffered an aortic dissection, a tear in the wall of the major artery carrying blood out of the heart. He had emergency surgery but died the next day from complications.

“He was still trying to pursue his dream of playing football,” Martin said. “He was just so young and it was a fluke thing. We don’t know how it happened or why it happened, but it did and the surgery was just so complicated that he wasn’t able to survive.”

Martin said Ronald Kemp was a very talented football player and she thinks his example inspired his son to work hard to excel in the sport.

“I think hearing the stories about his dad inspired him,” she said. “(Marcus and his younger brother), that was kind of their connection to their dad because they don’t really remember him or anything. I think the connection with football kind of gave them an insight to their dad that they probably never would have had. That was kind of their connection.”

Marcus Kemp with his father, Ronald Kemp. Photo Credit: Karen Martin
Marcus Kemp with his father, Ronald Kemp. Photo Credit: Karen Martin

Marcus Kemp said he wore his dad’s jersey number, 4, while playing football and basketball at Layton High School. He also followed in his father’s footsteps by playing the same positions of wide receiver and safety. He said his father’s example inspired him to “make something of himself and get into college.”

“He didn’t have a great life growing up, not an easy one, and my mom told me that (football) was his way out,” Kemp said of his father. “That’s what I wanted to do and football was the best way.”

Marcus Kemp was awarded a full-ride athletic scholarship to the University of Hawaii after he graduated high school in 2013. Now a sophomore, he is the starting wide receiver and recently scored his first touchdown of his college career. He said his father still inspires him and that he wants to make him proud.

“He’s definitely a part of my life,” he said. “He’s guided me along this path that I’ve taken and he’s helped me become the man that I am. (My brother and I) have wanted to make him proud and everyone else in my family proud and that’s what has driven us. If he were here, would he be proud of us? That’s what we were thinking about.”

Kemp plans to continue playing football and graduate from the University of Hawaii.

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