In his 29 years as Head
Boys Track Coach at Oak Ridge High School in Orlando, Coach
Hemmer coached 5 State,
10 Region, 17 District
and 17 Metro Conference Championship Teams. His teams also won
an additional 159 major
invitational and relay
team titles.
Coach Hemmer coached 33
individual high school All Americans along with 10 All American
Relay Teams. Oak Ridge is the only high school in the country
to have an All America 4x100 relay team which was the number 1
ranked team in the nation in 1977 and an All American 4x1600
meter relay team ranked number 2 in 1984. He also coached 14
individual state champions and eight state championship relay
teams. More than 120 of his athletes have earned athletic
scholarships in track and/or football.
In 1981, Oak Ridge
became the first central Florida high school to win the Bob
Hayes Invitational. The team was led by the 2014 Bob Hayes
Invitational Hall of Fame Inductee, James Rolle, as Rolle beat
Ribault’s Terry Ivey and Palatka’s Bruce Hardy in what is
considered the greatest race in the history of the meet.
Coach Hemmer’s national
involvement in track & field dates back to 1981 with his
appointment to the USA Men’s Olympic Development Committee. In
1992, he became only the second high school coach selected to an
Olympic staff serving as an assistant manager on the Barcelona
Olympic Team. In 1999, Coach Hemmer became the first high
school coach to serve as Head Manager of a World Championship
Team as the USA outscored 140 other nations while winning 7 gold
medals in Seville,
Spain.
During a career that
spans five decades, Coach Hemmer has given his time and energy
to the betterment of track and field as well as the total
athletic community. He served as President of both the National
Coaches Association and the Florida Coaches Association. In
1977, he was one of the four individuals who created and founded
the Golden South Classic which today is the second oldest high
school post season track meet. Upon his retirement in 2003, he
severed as the state meet director for nine years.
Coach Hemmer is arguably
one of the most highly decorated coaches in the state. He is a
member of nine hall of fames including The Florida Track & Field
Hall of Fame in 1985, the Florida Athletic Coaches Association
Hall of Fame in 1993, the National High School Athletic Coaches
Association Hall of Fame in 1998, the Florida High School
Athletic Association Hall of Fame in 2002 and in the inaugural
class of the Oak Ridge High School Athletic Hall of Fame in
2013.
Over the years, Coach
Hemmer, the 1993 National Boys Track Coach of the year, has been
honored and recognized on the national, state and community
level. In 1987, he received the Florida High School Athletic
Association Distinguished
Service Award. He was
awarded the Orange County Public Schools Award of Excellence in
1988. The Orlando
Touchdown Club awarded
him its highest honor in 1991, the Dr. Frank Gray Community
Service Award. Also in 1991, he was awarded the Governor’s
Council on Physical Fitness and Amateur Sports Leadership
Award. In 2010, he was the
recipient of the Jimmy
Carnes Lifetime Achievement Award. Then in 2012, he was awarded
the National High School Athletic Coaches Association’s highest
honor, the Dwight Keith Lifetime Award.
Coach Hemmer holds
advanced degrees from Eastern Kentucky University in 1967 and
1972 along with his under graduate degree from the University of
South Carolina in 1966. A former captain in the Air Force, he
is married to the former
Sandra Bates of
Columbia, S.C., and has two children: a daughter, Sloan, and a
son, Kyle and five grandchildren.
