Savage Words: I’ll never forget how it all started - Remembering Ken ‘SID’ Kortemeyer
I wouldn’t be writing this column right now if not for him. If not for him, I never would have had the opportunity to build the career I had in sports.
And I’ve never forgotten it.
I’m just a kid who grew up on the east side of Sioux Falls. I knew I wanted to work in sports, but I had no clue how to get there.
I enrolled at the University of Sioux Falls in the fall of 1987 with hopes of obtaining a journalism degree. From there, I had no idea. No idea what I was going to do with this degree.
Fortunately, I met Ken Kortemeyer, or SID, at USF while I was a student at USF. SID was essentially everything when it came to USF athletics. He served in many roles, including first as a student manager in 1969. He was named Sports Information Director in 1979, which is where he picked up the name SID. He went on to hold almost every position in the athletic department, and that includes Athletic Director in 1991.
When I met him as a student, I wasn’t really sure what his title was. He was just always “there” at every USF sporting event. I didn’t even know his name was Ken for the longest time. It was always just SID, and he was always there.
One of my early interactions with him came when I was a student and our intramural basketball team was playing a team consisting of several USF football players. These were some big, burly offensive linemen that we were going toe-to-toe with. Big, big dudes.
We blew a massive lead and lost in overtime. That was 35 years ago, and I still get a pang in my gut when I think about how we let that one get away.
Late in overtime when the game had clearly gotten away from us, I put a hard foul on one of the football players on a breakaway layup. I didn’t mean for it to look as bad as it did, but I got him from behind as he was driving to the basket. He went flying – flying – into the bleachers under the bucket.
SID saw it, quickly walked over to the confrontation that was building between me and the Cougar offensive line, and he booted me out. Booted me not just out of the game … but out of the Stewart Center! Mr. USF kicked me out of the building.
After graduating in 1992, I got to know him even better after I was hired as USF’s Sports Information Director. I asked him once if he remembered kicking me out of the building because of the hard foul.
“I didn’t do it because I was mad at you,” he said. “I did it to save your life!”
When I started as the S.I.D. in 1992, it was primitive. I truly didn’t know what I was doing, but SID helped me along. It was just little things at first, like typing out the rosters and printing several hundred copies for that night’s football or basketball game. It opened my eyes to so many other things I could do with these roster sheets.
I thought of SID often when I was the Director of Public Relations for the Los Angeles Lakers and Seattle SuperSonics many years later. In those positions, I was in charge of writing 40-plus page game notes for each game – home and away. It was a long way from the computer and copier in the Stewart Center in central Sioux Falls, but it all started there.
No matter where my career took me, I always stayed on top of USF athletics. I was in Boston one night when we were playing the Celtics. From media row, I pulled up the live stat box score from a USF vs. Dakota Wesleyan game.
I called SID’s office, just to see if he might be around while the game was going on outside his office in the Stewart Center.
He answered. I told him where I was.
“Why in the world are you calling me,” he said.
I told him I was thinking about him and that it was weird that I was at Boston Garden for a Celtics game, but it all started in the Stewart Center making rosters with him.
I never forgot where it all started.
“Well we’ve got Black Hills State and School of Mines this weekend if you want to come back,” he said with a chuckle. SID was always good for a one liner.
He was one of the most humble human beings I’ve ever encountered. From all of the things he taught me early in my professional career, staying humble has served me the most.
SID died last week at the age of 73. I certainly wasn’t as close to him as so many others who’ve passed through the doors at USF over the last 55 years were.
But I’m forever grateful he took this 22-year-old rookie under his wing in 1992 to show me the ropes.
I’ve covered countless sporting events since those first few days standing over that Stewart Center copier.
So, this Thursday, when Brandon Valley kicks off against Sioux Falls Jefferson at Howard Wood Field, I’m going to point to the sky, and think of him one more time.
I wouldn’t be there without him.
Courtesy of USF Sports Information