Even at 300 wins, basketball never gets old for Mark Porter

by shawn long Sports writer Reed-Custer basketball coach Mark Porter secured his 300th varsity victory in a 64-48 win over Wilmington last Friday night but he wouldn’t have known had someone not told him. For Porter it’s not about keeping count. Porter, who has been coaching for 38 years (25 years as a varsity coach) said the game just keeps getting better as he gets older. “Every year is a new year. Every year brings new challenges. You only get to coach the same kids maybe--most of the time it’s two years and sometimes it’s three. A couple kids it’s been four. It’s always changing. That’s what I like about it. It’s not like when you’re coaching a pro team and you’ve got the same guys or the same nucleus of guys. It’s ever changing. It’s also the other levels too. If you’re a freshmen coach, you’re getting a new bench of kids every single year. The game changes and you have to stay up on it and adjust to it. It’s not ever the same and the game has changed a lot since my first year in 1984-85 when I was fresh out of college coaching in Milledgeville, IL so it’s an ever changing thing.” Porter is not a coach to tally wins up. To him, it’s about so much more. “I think it’s about the love of the game,” commented Porter. “It’s about working with kids and the relationship you wind up building with kids. If you’re one of these guys that it’s all about the wins, you’re probably in the wrong business. It’s about building relationships with kids and trying to get them to be quality people--quality young men and wind up leaving your program as good people and good fathers with a good work ethic when they go out and work.” That’s why when Porter won the game the other night he had no idea it was his 300th. “I kind of forgot about it and somebody had brought it up to me. They said something about numbers and getting close so I knew about it this summer but then I kind of had forgotten about it and it wasn’t until afterward when I started to get a couple texts from people congratulating me and I realized that it was. What it really means to me is I’ve been doing this for a while and it’s a tribute to the kids that they’ve worked so hard with the kids that I’ve coached. “ This past Tuesday, the Reed-Custer basketball program hosted a celebration for Porter’s 300th win. “I feel lucky and blessed that I was able to spend that with loved ones. The celebration was when we played Beecher but I was able to enjoy that with loved ones, my wife, Heidi. She’s been there every step of the way ever since I first became a varsity coach. All through these years she’s always been there for me. She’s my rock and I was able to celebrate that with her and also with her mother. Then, later on that Tuesday when we wound up playing Beecher many of the people that are part of my side of the family were all able to come to the ball game to help celebrate .” The celebration was sweet. The win over a 20-win Beecher team made it even sweeter for Porter who was enjoying every bit of it with his family. “I was really proud of how the kids came and played. Beecher is a very good basketball team and since we beat them I think they’ve rolled off three or four in a row now and I think they’ve got 23 wins now. They’ve had a great year. Our kids came in focused and played 32 solid minutes and that’s been a big thing we’ve wanted the kids to do to play like that.” It’s been a grind-it-out year for his team as they’ve played hard every game. The reason why is he plays to their strengths. Whatever personnel he has dictates the strategy he implements. “You’ve got to change your strategy year to year. Just those few years where we were running and gunning, scoring a lot of points and set a national and state record for most three-pointers in a season when we were running what’s called the Grennel System. I mean we had a deep group that were talented. A handful of years later I get asked by coaches when we slowed things down and we’re a little more methodical. They said ‘why did you stop running and gunning and leave the system?’ and the first thing I said was we didn’t have the kids to do that. It’s like trying to win the Kentucky Derby with a bunch of Clydesdales. You’re not going to be able to do it. We needed to change our tempo and style. I’ve had teams who have done things like that all throughout the years. You’ve got to be able to change with the talent that you’ve got.” Even though his coaching strategy changes, his philosophy always stays the same. “It hasn’t change at all. The number one thing I want to do is put out good kids and good people. I want them to be good quality young men when they wind up leaving us. We want them to work hard and we want them to be good basketball players. We want them to have some class when they’re on the floor because they’re representing their family, the Braidwood community, the Reed-Custer schools, they’re representing themselves and they’re also representing the coaching staff. So we want to put out a good quality product and we want the kids to be good people.” Porter, who grew up Dixon, IL, got into basketball when he was young when his uncle, Jerry, bought him a hoop at five years old. After the hoop went up, it didn’t come down and Porter played every day from seven years old on. “We moved from Dixon to Rock Falls and my dad put it up in the driveway when I started shooting and I always played basketball in high school and college. I played a little football in high school and my senior year, I ran cross country. But there was just something about basketball that I kind of fell in love with. Especially in the state of Illinois where basketball is very popular. The state always winds up pushing, they came up with the slogan ‘the first March Madness’. Those are things I remember seeing on television. Some girls, a couple weeks of boys--it was always the best time of year and then watching the games on television.” Porter played basketball at Iowa Wesleyan College but he knew long before that he wanted to coach. “Basketball has always been a huge part of my life. It was just a sport I wanted to continue playing so I did. I knew at a very young age--when I was playing for my first coach--I wanted to teach and coach.” Porter started coaching at Milledgeville High School in 1984. He became the sophomore coach there before following his high school basketball coach, Cal Hubbard, at Rock Falls High School where he was the assistant. He did a two-year stint as the sophomore coach at Milledgeville before accepting the head coaching job at Reed-Custer. Porter loved coaching just as much as playing and got his first win in his very first game coaching at Milledgeville. He remembers it as if it were yesterday. “We beat Oregon High School 41-32. I think your very first win there are a lot of things that wind up standing out. I remember my first time-out as far as when the kids came over and sat down. I know it was complete fallacy but we had given up a couple of easy baskets and I came over and said, ‘I think that’s the worst defense I’ve ever seen in my entire life.’ A young guy that’s 22 years--just a little too excited and wanting the kids to be too fired up. The kids calmed down and did a great job and wound up pulling out a nine-point win.” Porter remembers the losses a lot more than the wins but has had plenty of both and knows how to handle both situations. “I think as a coach you remember the losses a lot more than the wins. I think kids are a lot more resilient than coaches are. Over the years we’ve had tough losses and the next day I come back to practice and the kids are like ‘hey coach, are we doing a practice?’ They’re bouncing around and they’re resilient. A loss--I still bring up losses to Heidi that we had back in 2014 or something like that. Those things wind up hanging with you. I think the losses hang with coaches a lot more than they remember the wins.” Porter remembers the back-to-back-to-back years where they won regional championships. “I think the three regionals in a row here at Reed-Custer in 14, 15 and 16 were very memorable. While we were playing the same style of play and when we were running the system, all three teams were very different. “Even though we had a handful of guys that were on all three teams like Travis (Schoonover), Brent (Headrick), Neil (O’Donnell) and AJ Simonelli, who were on all three teams. While they were very different, we kind of adjusted our play as we went but those are pretty memorable wins. Winning the sectional semifinals, all of them were just dogfights to get to the sectional finals. Those losses in the sectional finals always wind up hanging with you and we’d love to get back there some day. In 16 when we won the conference, that was pretty memorable. Reed-Custer hadn’t won the conference since 1986 or 1987 and that’s the only year that we’ve ever won the conference tournament too.” Porter wants to put a count on how many kids wind up successful and good people out of high school. “I want this year’s kids to go as hard as they can. The same thing with next year’s team. I want them to go as far as they can possibly go and be as successful as they can be. I also want them to be good students, be good people and be good role models for the younger kids in the Braidwood community.”