Doug Kettle – 1926

Perhaps the greatest male high school athlete Midland produced. Doug Kettle was also its most versatile. He played nearly every sport available – especially track and field. football, softball and basketball. With Kettle executing a vital role, Midland High School’s boys track and field team won the Tudope track and field meet and the M.B. Tudhope Athletic Trophy three consecutive years. from 1911 16. At each competition , Doug was the points leader for MHS. In his first Tudhope. in 1944. he beat two records: the running hop, step. and jump (39 feet. 6 and one-quarter inches), and the running broad jump (21 feet). The next year. Kettle bettered one record. shattered another and equalled an existing standard. When he was through. Doug had earned a third of Midland High School’s 73 total points that day. In 1946, he bested another of his marks and accounted for 18 of his school’s 69.5 points. Competing in the senior boys category at the 1947 MHS track and field meet, Kettle dominated every event he entered, winning all eight. In basketball, when Midland High School’s 1947 senior boys’ team beat Owen Sound 62-57 to win the Georgian Bay title. Doug was its best player and amassed 37 points — half of the team score. The powerful Midland squad of 1947 also became the Central Ontario Secondary School Association senior finalists, narrowly losing to Merriton High School in the championship, 49-42. After playing for MHS and ‘Y’ teams. he accelerated to the Midland Ontario Cafes Intermediate -13′ club. In 1945, the Ontario Cafes advanced to the Ontario Intermediate B championship. although Midland lost in the final game 34 to 29 to a team from Brantford It was as a football halfback for MHS that Kettle became known as Midland’s “Big Train.” The last element was softball. Playing in high school and then as a U of T undergraduate, he excelled at first base for the Glen Mawr Frocks. Twice. Kettle was a champion broad jumper (now called long jump) with U of T when they won the title of the Ontario-Quebec Athletic Association – a forerunner to the Ontario University Athletic Association. He performed with the 1948 title-holding intermediates, and the senior winners of 1949. After graduating in Physical Education from the University of Toronto. the Midlander became a teacher in Barrie, retiring as school superintendent for the Durham Board of Education in 1987. Doug and his wife, Elizabeth, continue to live in Ajax.