Friday, March 20, 2015

Kempin Loaned to San Antonio

Sporting Kansas City announced today that homegrown goalkeeper, Jon Kempin is headed out on loan, and it's not to the place that most people expected him to go though. Most people expected Kempin to be headed to Oklahoma City to continue to play under Jimmy Nielsen with affiliate club, the Oklahoma City Energy. That has turned out not to be true, instead, Kempin will go to the NASL and has joined the defending NASL champion, San Antonio Scorpions for the 2015 season.

Kempin not going to OKC, while surprising, does make some sense, as the Energy currently have three goalkeepers on their roster, including Evan Newton, who played 28 games for Arizona United in the USL last season. So with three goalkeepers already, and a goalkeeper with experience playing at this level, OKC doesn't need Kempin at this time. After last season when Kempin was recalled with plenty of time left in the season, I'm sure Nielsen wanted to get some further consistency in goal.

So into the picture comes San Antonio who had a similar situation last year when they had current NYCFC goalkeeper, Josh Saunders, in on loan before that club started up this year. This will give Kempin the chance to be a consistent starter and get him game time that he desperately needs at this point in his career. With Tim Melia in town to back up Luis Marin, this gives Kempin the chance to go to San Antonio, fight for the starting job there and get a number of games he likely wouldn't get here.

There's no word yet on whom on the roster Sporting will send to Oklahoma City at this point, but the likes of Saad Abdul-Salaam, Jimmy Medranda, and James Rogers seem like a few that could be on their way south.

No comments: