“The [UW] is full of memories. For my wife and I, it just brings out the kids in us,” he says.
Stemke earned a degree in marketing from the UW and was a punter for the Badgers. In 2000, he earned the Ray Guy Award as the nation’s top punter and was first-team All-American his senior year. He went on to play in the NFL for the Oakland Raiders and the St. Louis Rams. At the UW, Stemke met his wife, former Badger volleyball star Lizzy Fitzgerald Stemke ’04. Today, the couple and their family are based in North Carolina, where Kevin leads the industrials practice division at the recruiting firm Charles Aris.
“Last time we were back in Madison together as a family, my daughter, who’s now in high school, wanted to see the library, so we brought her to Helen C. White,” Stemke says. “I still have this vision of her just peering through the window wanting to see where kids would study. Then, we walked down to the Terrace, and there were a couple people studying there, and she couldn’t believe you could read in all these cool places. Seeing the campus and college life through her eyes was really fun.”
Favorite late ’90s or early ’00s music?
I remember vividly listening to a band called Great Big Sea. We hung out with some of the hockey guys, and one of the goalkeepers, Graham Melanson, from Canada loved this band, and so we really got into it.
Memorable late ’90s or early ’00s movie or TV show?
I was a huge Seinfeld guy.
Favorite late ’90s or early ’00s tech?
My grade point average really dipped when my roommates and I got a PlayStation. Tomb Raider II was the game, and you couldn’t peel us off the couch to get to class. And then — I think it might have been my senior year — I got a cell phone. It was a Nokia brick cell phone, and it had the game Snake.
Favorite campus-area hangout?
On Tuesdays in the summer, the football team would run stadium stairs for summer workouts. Afterward, some of us would meet across the street from Camp Randall at Stadium Bar. They used to pour sand in their parking lot and set up beach volleyball courts, so I asked Lizzy, my now wife, and some her teammates to come play beach volleyball with us there. Us meathead football players challenged a couple of the volleyball players to play beach volleyball. So that was a special hangout for me personally.
Memorable late ’90s or early ’00s trend?
Football players would spat up their shoes, which meant you’d tape your cleats really tight on the outside, almost halfway up the calf. As a punter, I never did it, but everybody else did. We were sponsored by Reebok at the time, and the spat would cover up the Reebok symbol on the shoes. So, there’d be players who would come to my locker before the game, and I would draw the Reebok symbol with a Sharpie on the spat. That way, the Reebok symbol was out and visible on TV.
Did any UW coaches have a lasting influence on you?
Coach Alvarez set a tone about the importance of paying attention to little things and getting the details right, and that has had a lasting impression on me. Then there was Jay Hayes, who was my first special teams coach, and he will always hold a special place for me. John Palermo recruited me, and he’s still somebody I think about. I think a lot about Darrell Wilson. He wasn’t necessarily a hard-nosed, scream at you kind of coach. He was steady in tone and support in the good times and the bad times, and he taught me lessons of having empathy while at the same time setting high expectations. That was something that really rubbed off on me.
What’s something you learned at the UW that you still carry with you?
The thing that I think about still to this day, and that I talk to my kids about, and that I talk about to anyone who will listen is intentionality — being intentional about everything you’re doing and working towards a goal.
How would you sum up your time at the UW?
Formative and forever. It’s what I learned there, who I met there, what we did there — winning the Rose Bowls, and Ron Dayne setting the NCAA career rushing record and winning the Heisman trophy. I met my wife there. It was so formative, and it’s forever.
