Mike Gemo is already a familiar face around Live Oak Athletics. When he’s not coaching football, Gemo is at basketball games supporting his players and fellow coaches; he’s at soccer matches; he’s at volleyball games and baseball games and at softball games.
Now he’ll be seen even more.
Gemo was hired to become Live Oak’s newest Athletic Director, taking over for Lawrence Crawford who moved over to Sobrato to become the AD there.
Gemo is the third AD in as many years after longtime director Mark Cummins stepped down citing frustrations with the school.
Gemo said his No. 1 priority is to the students and the programs of the high school and promises to everything he can to maintain the high expectations for Live Oak athletics.
“I believe in athletics at Live Oak High School,” Gemo said. “We have long-standing tradition of excellence and I wanted to be here to keep it going. I believe we’ll make alumni and the kids who go here proud.”
Gemo said he has no qualms about working both jobs as he had held a full time job as football coach that required him to often be on the road. Now he can hold two jobs and do them both in the same location.
New Live Oak Principal Maria Reitano said the choice in Gemo was made in large part to his commitment to the Live Oak community over the years as well as his dedication to the students.
“We were fortunate to have quite few really qualified applicants and he was among those,” Reitano said. “One of the reasons we decided to choose him was because he had such long history working to advocate for student athletes and support them on the field and in the classroom. We look forward to having him continue working for them.”
Reitano added that she was pleased Gemo wanted to approach the job in a manner that aligned with her vision for the school.
“Mike continues to express his commitment to all student and is interested to work with parents and community members in support of all students,” she said. “As principal, it’s great to hear he has vision that we share.”
Gemo took over as the football coach in 2011 after being an assistant. He said he plans to continue in that role as he also takes on his new job as athletic director.
He said he wants to follow in the footsteps of the former athletic directors at Live Oak.
“I’m not here to change culture of the school. I think culture here is great at Live Oak because of the standards set by the ADs in the past,” Gemo said. “They set the standard here and I hope I’ve learned enough watching what they do to keep that standard going.”
Helping Gemo keep that desire is his relationship with the other coaches at Live Oak who Gemo said all have a great sense of where they are taking their programs.
“I work for them trying to make their job easy so they concentrate on coaching their teams,” Gemo said.
He has already hit the ground running, meeting with the Fall coaches to ensure they have what they need to get ready for the new season.
Gemo said once he’s taken care of the needs of the Fall teams, he’s going to move on to make sure winter and spring have what they need to move forward.
Gemo comes on at a good time as there are few coaching vacancies still to be filled and the one outstanding position he had hoped would be filled by the end of this week.
