UWEC Athletics Hall of Fame
John Karpe won three NCAA national diving championships and was runner-up three times in addition to claiming six conference championships in the two diving events. Karpe was the NCAA Diver of the Year for three consecutive years in 1997, 1998 and 1999. Each year, he took a first and a second on the two boards at the national meet. He won the one-meter competition in 1997 and the three-meter competition in 1998 and 1999 with runner-up finishes on the alternate board each year, making him a six-time All-American.
Karpe, a Minnesota native who prepped at Coon Rapids, won both the one-meter and three-meter titles in the WIAC championship meets three straight years after transferring from UW-Madison. He set conference records on both boards as a sophomore and broke his own records as a senior. He also broke school and pool records on both boards multiple times. He was named to the WIAC’s All-Centennial team for swimming and diving in 2012. His performances helped the Blugolds to runner-up conference finishes in 1997 and 1998 and a conference championship in 1999. The 1999 Blugolds also placed seventh in the NCAA nationals, the highest finish achieved by a Blugold men’s team in NCAA swimming competition as of 2017.
For the first three years after graduating from UWEC in 2000, Karpe was a high dive performer for Sacco Shows, traveling throughout the country. He would perform 80-foot high dives into 10 feet of water and did so at places such as Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio and the Minnesota State Fair. At the time of his induction, Karpe had coached diving for 22 years including stints at UWEC and Hamline as well as Apple Valley, Chaska, Coon Rapids, Spring Lake Park, Irondale and Mounds View high schools in Minnesota. At that time, he was still coaching at Spring Lake Park, Irondale and Mounds View. He has coached one boy who won two state titles and one girl who won state once. Since he left the Sacco Shows, Karpe has been involved with various companies in an IT capacity of some sort. At the time of his induction, Karpe was in IT Support for the Park Dental group of dental offices in the Twin Cities, working in Roseville.
