A wise man once said that a good way to describe faith is by taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
For Obama Academy alum Michaela Porter, the famous MLK quote is a symbol of her reality. A few years ago, her own blind step down the proverbial staircase led to a small Appalachian town wedged within the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina … aka the last place that the native of Pittsburgh’s Northside and self-described “city person” ever would have envisioned as the final backdrop for her Division I college basketball career.
In hindsight, however, her decision to transfer from the University of Cincinnati to Appalachian State in 2019 was among the best she ever made. Now a redshirt senior guard for the Mountaineers, Porter is exactly where she’s meant to be. And her growth is a byproduct of it.
“Sometimes, we have to take a leap of faith to figure out if it’s the right situation for our life or not,” Porter told the Post-Gazette. “I learned that change is OK. It might be scary at first, but it’s definitely OK.”
A 1,000-point scorer in high school, Porter — the daughter of former Pitt basketball great and Duquesne coach Darelle Porter — led Obama Academy to four consecutive City League titles. She joined Cincinnati as a 3-star recruit by ESPN poised to follow in her father and brother’s (D.J., St. Francis Brooklyn) footsteps at the collegiate level.
She appeared in 24 games as a freshman with three starts, making solid strides that seemingly positioned her for a larger role in Year 2. But after the season, Cincinnati coach Jamelle Elliott was fired after nine years with the program despite leading the Bearcats to the second round of the Women’s NIT. The coach who drew Porter to Cincinnati was unexpectedly gone, replaced by a different staff with a different system that no longer aligned with her strengths.
To her credit, Porter tried to make it work with her new coach, Michelle Clark-Heard, but saw her playing time drastically decline as a sophomore — averaging just 4 minutes over 12 appearances.
“Everything completely changed,” Porter said. “I didn’t play that much coming off what I thought was a really good start to my college career. Having to adjust to a new coach, a new staff, a new system — going from thinking you’re going to play and then not playing, that was the thing that pushed me to explore other options.”
Sure, this happens all the time within the revolving door of college basketball’s coaching carousel. When coaches leave, players transfer. Rinse, wash, repeat. That is the reality. Except it wasn’t that clear-cut of a situation for Porter. The problem? She still loved everything else about her circumstances: the city, the school, her teammates, teachers and friends outside of basketball. Just not the basketball aspect of it.
In turn, she lost her love for the game of basketball — a game that was a family affair and, since the sixth grade, was pretty much all she ever knew.
“The one thing that brought me there wasn’t aligned with everything else,” Porter said. “It was hard. I felt like I needed a complete change in scenery, basketball, everything really. I just needed a totally fresh start.”
Upon entering the transfer portal, Porter and her father made the rounds of official visits at Memphis, Rider and Appalachian State, among others. Having his own experiences as a Division I player and head coach, Darelle was an ideal person to walk alongside her throughout the process. He emphasized that it was her decision — not his — and that she should go to a program that valued her and offered a solid support system.
Sam Pierce Jr., Appalachian State’s associate head coach at the time, had recruited Porter in high school. His presence, along with the impression made by head coach Angel Elderkin, swayed Porter to leave her city days behind in favor of Boone, N.C. — a town of 19,000 known as “the Heart of the High Country.”
“It’s definitely a lot different here compared to the city,” Porter said with a laugh. “Life is pretty slow to say the least.”
Nonetheless, it didn’t take long to realize App State was the right choice.
“One day during the preseason she called me and was like ‘Dad, I finally got my groove back,’” said Darelle Porter, now the executive director of the Ozanam Youth Basketball Program in the Hill District. “She had to get adjusted to the mountain altitude, but she got through it and now she’s thriving. As a father, to see that spark come back in your daughter’s eye, it’s an amazing feeling.”
Porter has steadily progressed in the three years since her transfer. As a junior in 2019, she played in 29 games and finished strong to close the season, averaging 10 points over the final seven games while serving as the team’s primary bench scorer. In 2020, she took a major step forward in her first season as a starter, averaging a career-high 8.7 points per game while leading the Sun Belt with 53 steals. She was second on the team in rebounding (6.7 per game) and double-doubles (3), and ended as a nominee for Sun Belt Defensive Player of the Year.
This season, Porter, a team captain, serves as a foundational pillar of stability for an App State team with eight new players and two new coaches. With three 20-point games and consistent production on both ends of the floor, Porter has evolved into the best version of herself as the Mountaineers (11-9, 5-2) pursue a Sun Belt title and NCAA tournament berth. She is averaging 12.9 points and six rebounds a game, second best on the team in both categories.
And while she may not be slamming home thunderous put-back dunks against Georgetown, her game looks quite familiar to a certain player from those storied Pitt teams of the late 1980s.
“Sometimes I see a play happening, and she’ll make the same play that I’m looking at it,” said Darelle. “She’ll see it before it happens and I’m like, ‘Wow, we see the game so similar.’ She’s a stat sheet stuffer. She gets boards, always has some steals, gets her assists. Her anticipation is real similar to mine. She jumps in the passing lane. She calls out a lot of the defenses. She’s a team captain. I was a team captain. We just have really similar paths.
“We shoot similar, too. When you look at old pictures, you can see the similarities. It’s nice to see she inherited a little bit of my ability.”
While her father ended his career as one of the all-time greats of Pitt basketball, Porter hopes to conclude hers with a Sun Belt championship and NCAA tournament berth — the latter of which hasn’t happened at App State since 1999. But regardless of how the rest of her season unfolds, she’ll walk away with an invaluable perspective that extends beyond the game of basketball.
The next time a proverbial staircase presents itself, Porter won’t be afraid to take the first step.
“It all taught me that I’m resilient,” she said. “When you have a real passion and love for something, you just need to find it within yourself to bring that love back out. You’ve got to get back to your ‘why’ and pull yourself out of that hole.”
First Published: February 9, 2022, 11:00 a.m.
