Steve Porter has packed a whole lot into 29 years of teaching and coaching high school sports.
There's been regional and provincial championships in rugby, basketball and football, athletes he's guided who have gone on to represent Canada at the highest levels from national teams to the Olympics.
Perhaps most rewarding of all, though, was having a front-row seat to the growth he's seen from his students in the classroom and on the field and then maturing into outstanding adults who contribute to the community and are now raising families of their own.
In short, wonderful memories that will last a lifetime.
It's been quite a journey for the Barrie native, who says he feels truly blessed for getting to live the dream of teaching and coaching in the same Barrie Central Collegiate high school he attended and loved so much.
"It's been an awesome journey," said Porter, who will retire this spring from Barrie North Collegiate.
The successes and special moments have been numerous for Porter on high school fields, courts, pitches and gymnasiums, but when it comes to the one that will always be close to his heart, he doesn't hesitate.
Not only did he get to enjoy it as a rugby coach, but more importantly as a father.
"In 2015, when (my son) Keaton scored the go-ahead try to win OFSSA gold on our own pitch in an OFSAA that Ron Andrews and I were running, that will always be No. 1," Porter said. "My heart was bursting with pride over the whole situation.
"When it's your own kid and to see the young man he's become through his interaction with athletics and you've had a part in that as a father and coach, that was awesome."
Porter was actually on a different path when he graduated from Barrie Central in the mid-1980s. He attended Queen's University and, looking to follow in his dad's footsteps, wanted to get into medicine.
Porter admits, though, he wasn't a good enough student.
Out of university, he took a job running a hotel in Kingston for a couple of years before some soul searching told him this wasn't what he wanted to do with his life.
"I would go back into teaching," said Porter, who did his training at York University and was hired right out of teacher's college at Maple Grove Public School in 1990.
Coaching sports was front and centre for Porter growing up, and becoming a teacher would allow him to do that.
"Being brutally honest, it was the only way I could get paid to coach," he said.
His "fantastic experience" playing sports through school stuck with him and it's why he wanted to give back.
"When I knew that was where I was going to go, it was pretty hard wired into me that I was going to give back or pay it forward to the kids that I was going to have an opportunity to work with because I knew how much athletics made my life so much more exciting and so much more fulfilling," he explained.
Porter still remembers that first year as a teacher at Central in 1998 with student athletes like Joe Santoro, Derek Cool, Taylor Armstrong, Bryan Taylor and Dave Ashwood.
"It was really cool," he said. "Here comes this guy who had a whole lot of energy and a very, very understanding wife."
He got to work with "awesome" teachers like Dave Garland and Ed Leach in football, Will Smith in basketball, and Andrews in rugby.
In the first year, he lost in the Georgian Bay finals in football, won OFSAA bronze in basketball, and OFSAA gold in rugby.
"So it was easy to say, 'OK, this was a lot of fun. I want to do a lot of this.'"
His time at Central, which has since been torn down, will always remain close to his heart.
"I'm biased as hell, but Central was a different place," said Porter, who has also spent time coaching on the sidelines with the Barrie Royals and Georgian Grizzlies. "It was a very different place."
As an athlete and student at the school, he was already aware of the culture, traditions and belief system at Central. As an adult, they searched out ways to teach kids to build on the culture and traditions.
Anyone who followed Andrews and Porter and the school's dominance on the rugby pitch could see it. So many who had never even played the sport before Grade 9, yet Central would run off a string of consecutive Georgian Bay championships that ran from 1993 to 2006.
"Everything they learned in the game and on the pitch and off the pitch was the responsibility of the culture that came ahead of them," Porter said. "We always had a saying in Central rugby, that the legacy is that you teach the person behind you on the depth chart to be a better player than you were.
"It wasn't just the adults that were doing this, it was the mindset of the team."
When that streak came to an end with a loss to Banting in the final, the kids were shattered. Yet, it only drew them closer.
"They felt they let the program down by being the first team to lose," Porter explained. "Well, some of those kids are some of my closest friends because that's a unifying force. We stay in contact all the time."
So many of the student athletes Porter worked with would go on to reach great heights. Taylor Paris would play pro in Europe and become a veteran on national rugby teams, while others like Brett Curtis and Ashwood would be among many Central alumni who would go on to represent their country in rugby.
"To see the successes in athletics is one thing and then you see guys like Santoro and he's managing a financial portfolio in Toronto that's massive and he's married with a couple of kids," Porter said. "You walk away feeling, 'You know what? I had a part of that and the pride with that is fantastic'."
On the basketball court, Porter recalls working with Kayla Alexander.
"I remember when she came to us as this six-foot-two, super skinny girl who just wanted to learn how to play basketball," he recalled. "We would spend hours doing footwork drills with her."
Alexander would go on to earn a scholarship to Syracuse University, play professionally in France, and is now in her seventh season in the WNBA.
Porter beams with pride when he talks of all Alexander has accomplished and the young woman she's become.
"She's now writing children's books," he said. "The life she's created for herself and knowing that you had a little bit to with a little piece of that is fantastic."
When Central closed in 2016, it was crushing for Porter. So much was lost.
"All that awesomeness disappeared," he said.
Porter has kept in contact with many of his former students through social media and runs into so many of them around Barrie. He admits it's pretty cool to see what he calls the circle of life come through.
"Over five years, you see a massive growth in confidence, in maturity, determination, perseverance, being able to be knocked down and get back up again," he said. "They're leaving with their chin held high and even if nothing positive happens in athletics the rest of their lives, they're walking out with a couple of OFSAA medals in their pocket and they know they created a memory that no one can take from them.
"To know that you had an opportunity to help a kid with that, that's what charges your batteries every single day."
When the bell rings on his final day of teaching, Porter knows he'll be just fine.
"I'm going to miss it, but not as much as everyone thinks I will," he said before laughing out loud.
Still, he knows it'll be an emotional day.
"Not emotional that I would be upset about, it's the classic bittersweet," Porter said. "You're giving up part of your life that you're super passionate about, but it's the passing of a torch."
School athletics, he says, will be in good hands with teachers like Mike Alcombrack and Drew Taylor.
"When I look at that, I go, 'You know what? We're in a good place here. This is a good thing we did here'," he said. "And you don't feel like you're leaving a problem. 'OK, I've done a good job of passing the baton here and now I can stop and watch'."
Porter says he's keen to be on the other side of the pitch.
"I want to be in the stands and enjoy the spectacle instead of having to think about every second of it and what we're going to do to win," he said, looking ahead to post-retirement life. "I'm not upset and I'm eager to move on with the next phase of my life."
Porter has started writing a blog about his experiences over the years and his feelings on education in general. Taking account of all the things he did and how he, his wife, Joyce, and kids, Keaton and Maddison, made it work.
"Keaton grew up on the sidelines of a basketball court before he could walk," he said. "Would I trade this? Not for a million dollars. Was it difficult? Sure, but I did marry an absolutely incredible women who understood how passionate I was about what I was doing and she supported it wholeheartedly.
"I couldn't have asked for anything better than winning the lottery on that one."
Porter hopes to turn his passion into a new direction when he's retired. Something that has nothing to do with coaching.
He can even sleep in a little. After all, there'll be no more morning rush after a snowfall.
"I'm really looking forward to not having to get up on a Monday morning and shovel the driveway to get my car out to get to school by 8 a.m.," he said with a chuckle.
