After a coaching career that helped produce numerous league, provincial and national championships, as well as podium finishes, Steve Porter will now take his place in the Barrie Sports Hall of Fame (BSHOF) as a builder tonight.
“Just over the moon when I got the call,” Porter told BarrieToday ahead of Wednesday's induction ceremony at Allandale Recreation Centre. “I wasn’t born here, but I grew up in Barrie and to receive (the call), well … it (validates) and makes me appreciate … all the time I spent with my (sports) family and away from my own family.”
Porter was a longtime basketball and rugby coach at Central, the Barrie high school that was shuttered and then demolished about eight years ago. He spent a few years at Barrie North after Central closed before retiring just past the holiday break in 2020 and just before the pandemic struck.
Porter’s enshrinement comes 21 years after he was honoured by the hall as the city’s coach of the year, and five years after winning the Ross Marr award for his dedication to high school sports.
From that local perspective, Porter’s best success came while partnering with Ron Andrews – who has already been enshrined in the BSHOF – at Central’s rugby program.
The sport already had a long history in the area, with Eastview having a particularly strong program headed up by the late Jim Hamilton, but Andrews and Porter took it to almost stratospheric levels at the downtown school.
Porter began coaching rugby at Central in 1998, 16 years after he had graduated from there as a student and continued for almost 20 years before it closed.
His teams won the Georgian Bay title every year except 2006, when Alliston’s Banting Memorial, who had a purple patch of players that steamrolled to a provincial crown after beating Central in the Georgian Bay final.
Porter’s Central teams also won seven provincial titles in that span. His basketball teams at Central included a handful of Georgian Bay titles and a couple of provincial podium finishes, too.
There are literally too many players to mention in this space who graduated from Central and later went on to play rugby at both the provincial and national level. But to give it context, Porter (and Andrews) had a hand in helping players such as Team Canada players Taylor Paris and both Lukan sisters — Megan and Kalli — on the rugby pitch.
Kayla Alexander, a Canadian Olympian on the hard court, was one of many basketball players that Porter coached.
Like any amateur coach, however, success isn’t always measured in wins/losses, championships or elite graduates. Porter helped build programs at Central, not just teams and whether you are a current player, former athlete or an interested observer, he left an impression that was not soon forgotten.
Good coaches tend to have a presence, and Porter had it just as much as his impressive record.
That nuanced quality contributed to one of Porter’s (and Andrews) greatest achievements that had little to do with winning basketball and rugby titles, although he kept doing that. That was simply keeping programs going at Central as enrolment dwindled.
His last championship team in 2016 (pictured below) was cultivated from a student population of about 400, a minuscule number compared to current-day enrolment at the area’s surviving high schools, and the new ones in areas the city has grown toward, away from Central’s old catchment area.
Beyond the X's and O's, though, Porter has seen change in the both the games and in the athletes.
“I wouldn’t say good or bad,” explained Porter, while comparing and contrasting high school sports in the area. “It’s just different.”
The main difference Porter sees — and he allows that it concerns him — is the specialization in one that young athletes now take on at a much younger age than when Porter first began coaching.
Porter, with his wife, Joyce, have two grown children, Maddison and Keaton, who were both active athletes. Keaton is now 28 and two years younger than his sister, is pictured here with the 2015 provincial championship rugby banner he helped Central win with his father as coach.
Porter is the son of the late Dr. Terry Porter, and his mom, Andrea, who still lives in town. He is the oldest of four boys, one of whom, David, predeceased him.
Porter is part of the 2024 BSHOF class that also includes figure skaters Mitch Islam and Alexandra Paul (posthumous), Special Olympic swimmer Emily MacTavish, late figure-skating coach Jo-Anne Eyers and retired National Hockey League referee Dan Marouelli.
The Simcoe County Rovers, as the 2023 League1 Ontario champions, are also being honoured.
Wednesday’s ceremony at the Allandale Recreation Centre begins at 7 p.m. and will be one of the last ones to take place at the south-end facility. The hall is slated to take up residence at the new YMCA facility that is to be built near Sadlon Arena.
