Lowell McClenny has seen a lot of change in Aurora.
Starting his career owning a milk delivery franchise at the age of 17, McClenny joined the Aurora Police Department in 1965, after the milk business went through a downturn in the mid '60s. He saw the creation of York Regional Police in 1971, joining up with the new department and climbing the ranks until he retired as a superintendent in 1999.
McClenny also saw the rise and end of Sportbeat Aurora on Aurora Cable Television, something of a cultural, community staple that told the stories of local sports teams in Aurora from 1982 until 2008.
“It was a hit with the community,” he said. “It was something people looked forward to every week because they knew eventually they were going to hear something about somebody they knew.”
“Whether it would be their hockey team, like a house league hockey team or a rep hockey team, baseball, lacrosse, whatever, we did it all,” he said. “So it was it was something that everybody enjoyed and looked forward to.”
The show was concocted in part by Steve Mitchell, who approached Lowell about producing a sports show on the local cable channel. McClenny was already involved with local sports and the cable channel, doing some play-by-play commentary for local hockey teams and serving as a coach for and president of Aurora Minor Hockey for nearly a decade.
“He was the right guy to get things started when they opened it up to the community,” said McClenny of Mitchell, describing him as a "sports fanatic."
The show started humbly, filmed with one camera and hosted out of a converted house on Yonge Street near Cousins Drive. The show's first guest was Toronto Sun sports reporter Steve Buffrey, who then worked for a local Aurora newspaper.
Over the years, McClenny's co-hosts changed, with Doug Judson, Gerry Jennings, Colin Graham and John Swarbrick all doing stints. The location changed too, as Aurora Cable moved to a bigger space on Industrial Parkway South.
The show also started to go out into the community, filming reports at local rinks, fields and diamonds, and interviewing coaches and players young and old. McClenny recalls interviewing children as young as age four from the Optimist Hockey League, saying he still gets approached by people in the community who were on the show back in the day.
“We never had any trouble getting someone to come on and have a little interview with us because they wanted the exposure and they got it, because it was right here in Aurora and stayed in Aurora,” he said.
“It really, it's still out there, but it was a very popular show, it really was,” he added.
A frequent guest on the show, Ron Weese said Mitchell and McClenny were “iconic figures” in the Aurora sports community and covered the local sporting community “expertly.” Weese appeared on the show multiple times, promoting the work and successes of the Aurora Youth Soccer Club.
“Amateur sport is where every professional sports and every world-class athlete began,” said Weese, who is now president of Sport Aurora, itself marking its 20th anniversary in 2025. “So it's very important to promote and participate in that way for parents and kids.”
In part for his efforts on Sportbeat, McClenny was inducted into the Aurora Sports Hall of Fame in 2015.
McClenny hosted the show for 26 years, until Aurora Cable was bought by Rogers, and McClenny got a call and was told “very abruptly” that his services would no longer be needed.
Both McClenny and Weese said the show is missed in the community, noting it played a big role in promoting local sports groups.
“The feeling is still out there that Sportsbeat Aurora would have still have been going,” said McClenny. “People miss it. They really do. And I mean, I'm at an age where I probably wouldn't be doing it anyway, or I probably would be, I'm still involved in a lot of things."