Larry Mark Dye is a U.S. history teacher at Portage High School. Dye received his degrees from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, and has degrees in history, religion, and education. Dye has been teaching at Portage High School for around six years.
“Teaching is enjoyable because every day is exciting,” Dye said. “I get to interact with a lot of interesting people and learn about their daily lives. Aside from the social interaction, I enjoy the situational challenges of the profession. You are unexpectedly put in a lot of difficult spots and need to come up with a quick solution.”
Along with teaching at the school, Dye is both a baseball and girls' basketball coach. With the baseball team, Dye chose to bring his father along to help him, and he feels that this family atmosphere is a very positive thing for the players.
“You know, coaching, especially at the younger levels, you never know what you're going to run into, especially with the team,” Dye said. “In terms of chemistry, I'll sometimes have teams that I may not think are the most able-bodied students, and then they turn out to be some of my best teams because they work together well. And obviously the banter from the kids definitely keeps you on your toes.”
Dye has been coaching these sports for a number of years and stated that he truly enjoys coaching the sports.
“Yeah, so I coach baseball, and I’ve coached baseball for about the last five years, I did girls basketball at Portage this year for the first time,” Dye said. “I've coached girls' basketball for about two years, I had a pretty big gap I did at Munster in 2014 and again in 2020 here at Portage, I've been consistently doing baseball for about the last five to seven years.”
Along with coaching baseball, Dye also plays baseball for a semi-pro league. Dye played baseball at Earlham College and explained that he has loved the sport for a long time. He said that his dad encouraged him to start playing baseball and that he is happy that he did so.
“So, I play on the Beecher Muskies, and this will be my third year,” Dye said. “They've been around for a little over 40 years. We play in a semi-pro college league out of the suburbs in Chicago. It's called the Chicago Suburban League. It's a very competitive environment. I enjoy playing in the league because the team I'm on has a lot of educators or former ballplayers that are now kind of in their late 20s, early 30s. And so, you have a lot of guys that are still coaching, very passionate about playing, and they all stay in shape. We're a pretty good team. We won our league last year, and we're hoping to repeat the process.”