ECC football on the rise

Early in 2021, Mike Kemp was in a coaching limbo. He was the part-time,  interim head football coach at Erie Community College. A year into Covid, however, Kemp wasn’t certain that ECC football would survive the pandemic.

The 2020 season had been canceled because of Covid.. Many of the  ECC coaches had been laid off. The budget had been cut. Most of the players had scattered, uncertain where the football program was headed.

“I wasn’t sure the program was going to continue,” Kemp said early this week in the football office at ECC’s North Campus.

Then in March, athletic director Steve Mullen met with Kemp in Batavia and offered him the full-time gig as head coach. “We talked about what had to be done and what the limitations were going to be,” Kemp recalled, “and I said, ‘I’ll give it a shot.’ ”Kemp laughed at the memory. Essentially, he was being asked to rebuild a junior-college football program from the ground up. To start over.

“Oh, it was. Very much so,” said Kemp, who said it might be a stretch to say the Kats had a dozen players still on the roster after the lost season of 2020..

He took the job. Kemp, after all, was a football lifer. A Brockport native, he played football at Notre Dame as a walk-on in the 1970s, after going to South Bend on a wrestling scholarship. He was 68 at the time, but had no intentions of quitting coaching after 45 years in the profession. He had coached college football at every level, in 10 different jobs, so he knew what he was up against.

He might have bene at rock bottom, in a two-year school where change is a way of life. But if you’re going to build, you might as well have high expectations and standards. He met with Mullen and top administrators and told them as much.

"I sat down with Steve, the president and the dean and said, ‘This is how I’m going to do it’,” Kemp said. “‘If it works for you, great. If it doesn’t, tell me and I’ll move on’. But they were on board with it.

“I told them from the get-go, we’re going to stress academics, athletics and citizenship. We said we’re going to make the kids go to class, make sure they come to practice, and make the kids stay out of trouble, and if we don’t, we’re going to get rid of them. They were fine with it, and it’s been working.”

They took their lumps, to be sure. The Kats went 1-7 in 2021 and 1-9 in 2022. Making matters worse, they lost their stadium on the South Campus in Orchard Park, where the Bills broke ground on their new facility. Erie CC had to play games at Williamsville South High, while waiting for the college to build a new sports stadium on the North Campus near the corner of Young and Main streets.

Mullen said it was nice to have a coach of Kemp’s experience to guide the football program through such an uncommonly turbulent time.

“I knew Mike and he had experience,” said Mullen, who had Kemp as a teacher when he was a college student and Kemp an assistant coach at Cortland. “There was a lot of turmoil and he was able to come in and really steady the ship that year. He helped us through that season, through Covid, through not having a stadium.

“He helped keep us on the right track,” Mullen added. “We’ve had a goal of slow and steady. We want to be a spot for student-athletes, especially locally, where it’s a good fit for them to grow. I think more than anything, his experience made it easier on me, having somebody already here on staff.”

Slowly, they did grow. In 2023, their first year at Will South, the Kats went 3-7. They doubled it to 6-4 in 2024. This year, they went 9-1, winning three games by a single point. ECC finished fourth in the national junior college Division III poll, barely missing a top two finish and a shot at a title game.

“Going into the season, I thought we had the potential to win eight games, if we stayed healthy, played well and everybody did their job,” Kemp said.

When you build a program, kids stay around. Kemp said ECC had seven sophomores in 2024. This season, they had 30. That’s a huge upgrade in experience, which is critical at that level. The Kats had 92 players on the roster, the most in recent times. More impressive, they finished the season with 90.

“We want to be that school for players who want the junior-college route, where they don’t have to go out of town to play,” Mullen said. “They don’t have to go to Albany to play junior-college football, or to Scranton or New York City, or even out west. We have kids coming in from outside as well, but we want to be that option for any Western New York student. If they want junior college football, then we are the best option for them. That’s what we want to be.”

Two dozen graduates of local high schools were part of this season’s historic success, including all-Western New York picks like Anthony Vaccaro (Grand Island), Delshon Taylor (Bennett) and Sam Ikekwuono, who won the Trench Trophy as the area’s top lineman for Lackawanna in 2024.

Kemp said the most vital cog of all was quarterback Noah Willoughby, who broke the Western New York passing record at South Park and came home to play after failing to get on the field for Division II Lock Haven as a freshman.

Willoughby completed 58 percent of his passes for 1,787 yards, with 15 touchdowns and only three interceptions as the Kats averaged 28 points a contest. Kemp said Willoughby was hurt early in the second half of the team’s only loss, to Hudson Valley. He said Willoughby has a year of eligibility left, too. 

“He is a nice kid,” Kemp said of Willoughby. “(At Lock Haven) he was immature and undisciplined. I told him, ‘This is what I’m going to demand from you. You need to be on time, you need to do this, do that’. We’ve had a couple of conversations since then, but he’s turned it around. He is very productive. He’s a pleasure to work with and he’s the difference-maker. When he’s in the game, we’ve got a chance to win.”

Kemp said it’s a misconception that junior-college players are an undisciplined bunch. Sure, some have issues, but establish a standard and many will achieve it. ECC has an all-academic team for anyone with a GPA of 3.0 or better. The number of plaques has increased from four to 27 over the last five years.

It’s remarkable to think the Kats had their 9-1 season as a team without a home. They’ve increased their win total all three years while playing at Will South, while the new stadium was being constructed. Next year they’ll play in their new place, which seems symbolic of a rising grid power.

“I hope so,” Mullen said. “We didn’t build the field because of the success of the football team, but it’s certainly nice that we’re building the program back up as the field is being completed. It’s going to create a lot of excitement going into next season. I’m excited for what next season could bring.”

Kemp will be in his 50th season of coaching next fall. He’s 73, but has no plans to stop. He commutes from his native Brockport, where he lives with his wife, Katherine. His son, Sean, is sports information director at SUNY Brockport and daughter Stephanie teaches in Kendall. Mike has coached in 10 different places, mostly in New York State. He saw how all-consuming it was for coaches at the higher levels when he was at Notre Dame; and he wanted a career where he could have a more normal family life.

“I hope I live long enough to coach on that field out there,” Kemp said, nodding  toward Main and Youngs. “I’ve always said, as long as it’s fun and rewarding, and as long as I’m healthy and still have the energy to do it right, I’m going to keep doing it. Up to this point, it hasn’t been an issue,.”