Porter Leads Akron to top of college soccer's mountain

A national championship for Caleb Porter began on the soccer fields of Southwest Michigan.

Porter, who was a two-time all-stater for the Blue Devils in the early 1990s, became the first area person to coach an NCAA Division I athletic team to a national title when his Akron men’s soccer team upset No. 1-ranked Louisville, 1-0, in the College Cup championship on Sunday in Santa Barbara, Calif.

Akron (21-1-2) is the third Mid-American Conference team to win a national title. Western Michigan’s cross country teams won championships in 1964 and ’65.

His high school coach, Lee Newland, saw the same will-not-fail attitude on Sunday that Porter exhibited when he played at Gull Lake.

“Caleb was a strong soccer player, but one of the things that distinguished him was that he was very, very determined,” Newland said. “As a freshman in high school, he was traveling two or three times a week to the east side of the state to play club soccer because he wanted to get better.

“He was strong on the ball as a player, but above all, he was excellent because he wanted to be.”

Porter, who at 5-feet, 9-inches tall, wasn’t the biggest player, but he wouldn’t back down from a challenge. He didn’t do that at Indiana as either a player or as an assistant coach.

His challenge for the past five years was to build Akron into a national soccer power.

“When he was playing, I didn’t see a coach come out of this, but who knew?” Newland said. “He played for a premier college team until injuries knocked him down.

“Caleb is a good recruiter and that says a lot with the size of program Akron has.”