Medina County Sports Hall of Fame: Burke was a Taylor-made star for Medina

Taylor (Burke) Gilman is widely considered to be the best female athlete in Medina County history, but she ain't perfect. Lengthy interviews with those closest to her — mom Julie, dad Bill, older sister Lauren DeVere and husband Robert — uncovered the following tidbits: The young woman who will be inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame during June 18 ceremonies at The Galaxy Restaurant in Wadsworth is not much of a swimmer."We keep her in the shallow end," Robert said. The 5-foot-11, 155-pound athletic dynamo who earned 11 varsity letters at Medina and eight at the University of Florida is not a high-caliber distance runner."My claim to fame and the only thing I can beat Taylor in is running," said sister Lauren, who graduated from Medina in 2008 and played four years of soccer at Ohio University. "I am faster than her and I can run longer distances. We'll go jogging and she's always, 'Give me a second; I have to tie my shoe' so she can rest." Were it not for the fancy jersey goalies get to wear — Taylor gave up lacrosse as a kid in part because she didn't like the skirt and dumped gymnastics because the tight-fitting leotard just didn't cut it — the 2010 winner of Ohio's Ms. Soccer award might not have ever moved into the net.Seems when she was just beginning the sport, the coach's daughter was the best scorer and Taylor was the best defender. Then one day the team's goalie didn't show up, so her dad Bill, an assistant coach, came up with what turned out to be a gigantic keeper of a sales pitch."Nobody else wanted to do it so I finally said, 'Taylor, you get to wear a special shirt,'" Bill recalled. "She's like, 'OK (drawn out), Dad, I'll do it.' Then she dove for a ball, landed in a puddle, got up, blew mud out of her mouth and said, 'Yeah, this is fun back here.'" Bring any of this up to Taylor, who is celebrating her 28th birthday today, and she'll laugh harder than anyone, in part because that's who she is and in part because it beats talking about herself. When contacted for an interview earlier this week, she had just completed some prep work for her upcoming speech at the hall of fame banquet. When asked what she was going to say, she said she would attempt to thank all those who helped her along the way, including her coaches and teammates and especially her family. "I would not have changed anything about growing up in Medina," said Taylor, who now lives in Belleair, Fla., with husband Robert and 12-year-old Brittany spaniel Nox. "I'd need two days to thank every person in Medina that I needed to thank. Medina was absolutely perfect for what I needed it to be. "(Attending Florida) was a bit of a culture shock for me at first. I had a false sense of what normal was. Florida was a great place for me to play with a lot of people from different cultures and backgrounds, but it also made me realize how fortunate I was to grow up in Medina and how special my family was. I didn't realize that support system was so rare." The parents Bill Burke grew up in West Akron — he was the seventh of nine children — and graduated from Archbishop Hoban in 1977. He lettered in football and played all sports — "None of them well," he said — growing up. Bill earned a bachelor's degree in business administration and marketing from Akron in 1983 and got his MBA from Baldwin Wallace in 1987. He owns Fire-Dex, a Medina-based company that creates protective equipment for firefighters worldwide, and Gear Wash, which is responsible for the cleaning and repair of that equipment. Lauren and Taylor now work for him, completely by their choice. Bill's wife, the former Julie Sams, graduated from Cloverleaf in 1978 and earned a degree in special education from Akron in 1982. She got her master's in administration from Akron in 1985 and spent 30 years working as a special education teacher, assistant principal and principal at various schools in the Cloverleaf and Medina districts. Julie was a cheerleader at Cloverleaf and Akron and also set a Colts school record with a leap of 5-3— or maybe it was 5-2 — in the high jump. "When the girls got started in track, I was loving it because I could brag to them about that school record," she joked. "Then Taylor jumped higher than that in middle school." Bill and Julie didn't push their kids into sports, but once they showed an interest, they afforded them every opportunity they could. Those opportunities came with simple guidelines: School first, play fair, compete hard and stay humble. "Whatever Lauren did, Taylor wanted to try," Julie said. "Taylor followed Lauren around for the longest time, sitting on the sideline and asking, 'When am I going to be old enough?'" Lauren zeroed in on soccer fairly early and also ran track at Medina. Taylor wanted to try everything, and she did. Gymnastics not only required a small outfit, there were too many stops in the action for her liking. Lacrosse not only required a skirt, there wasn't enough contact allowed. "Taylor thought she was going to be able to hit people, so that didn't last too long," Julie said. Now basketball, that was fun, especially when Bill and some of his employees were playing in the driveway and Taylor was allowed to join in. "One of them was a linebacker in college," Julie said. "Taylor stood right in front of him and took a charge. The guy was like, 'Oh, my gosh, I'm going to get fired.'" It didn't change during Taylor's four years at Medina, where as a senior she helped the Bees win their first league title since 1996. "On the basketball court, she had the same moves as on the soccer field," Bill said. "She's diving all over the place for balls. I'm like, 'Taylor, that is hardwood. This is not a mud puddle.' She absolutely loved it. (Medina coach Chris) Hassinger had a deal where if you took two charges in a game, you got a Smoothie. Taylor had lots of Smoothies." When it came to soccer, Taylor was a natural in goal. The same was true when it came to the high jump, which was when Julie realized her youngest daughter was more gifted than most. "I can tell you the exact moment," Julie said. It came during a middle school meet in Columbus, where Taylor cleared 5-6. The high jump official asked Taylor if her mom or dad was there, which was a silly question because at least one of them was always there. When Taylor said yes and he asked her to have one of them come see him, she was worried she had done something wrong. "I went down and this guy said, 'I've been doing this 40 years, and I've never seen someone so young that was able to jump 5-6 and do it so athletically and so easily,'" Julie said. "'You should get her hooked up with someone to pursue this.'" The man gave Julie the name of Mike Caza, a former high jumper at Kent State who had a fitness center in Twinsburg. Julie blew it off at first, but when Taylor continued to excel, she finally called him. Caza initially told Julie he didn't train high jumpers, but when he met Taylor — and Julie and Bill got their hands on an old high jump stand and took it to the facility — he changed his mind. By this time, Taylor was heavily involved in soccer, basketball and track and field. Lauren also was playing soccer, so Julie had a color-coded calendar in the kitchen, with Lauren's schedule in pink and Taylor's in blue, complete with what color uniforms each was to wear that day, where they needed to be and what time they were expected to arrive and depart. Taylor went on to lead Medina to a Division I state soccer title as a junior and capture three straight state championships in the high jump, the last with a state-record leap of 6-1 1/4 on her 18th birthday, meaning today is the 10th anniversary of that jump. "I kept scrapbooks for her every season," Julie said. "People ask about her awards and she has no idea. She loved the camaraderie. Sure, she always wanted to win, but if she did, she did it gracefully. "She's everybody's friend. She doesn't think there's a mean bone in anybody's body. That's just her personality. It's what made her oblivious to competition. People used to say she had ice in her veins under pressure, but she really just took everything in stride." Once Taylor got to Florida and Lauren was a senior at Ohio U, Bill and Julie, who now live in Key Largo, a six-hour drive from Taylor's home in Belleair, continued to arrange their schedules to be at as many events as possible, often splitting up so one daughter would not feel neglected. "It was divide and conquer," Bill said. During Taylor's four years with the Gators, at least one parent was at every track meet, home and away, and every soccer game. The only exception came when both attended Lauren's college graduation. On that occasion, Bill and Julie paid for a plane ticket and motel room so Taylor's boyfriend — and future husband — could attend the Drake Relays in Iowa. "Driving places, plane tickets, staying in hotels, I can't even wrap my head around how much they spent," Taylor said. "Cleats, gloves, camps, we always had everything we needed. I try not to think about the dollar amount. I don't even want to know." Bill remembers a friend congratulating him when both his daughters got D-I athletic scholarships, telling him how great a free college education must be. "It's actually not free," Bill quipped. "It's pre-paid." Bill and Julie, though, would gladly do it all over again, and Lauren and Taylor are eternally grateful. "'Thank you' would be the short version," Taylor said of her message to her parents. "Looking back on it now, I can't imagine all the sacrifices they made for Lauren and me. All their weekends were traveling to sporting events, but if I had decided one day that I didn't want to play sports and I was going to learn how to play the piano, my parents would have said, 'Go for it.'" The older sister Lauren, husband Aaron and their 15-month old son, Burke William DeVere, now live in Orlando, a two-hour drive from Taylor and Robert's home in Belleair. "Taylor's my absolute favorite person in the entire world," Lauren said. "I could not be more proud of her. It's sad the sports part is over, but she's an amazing wife and she'll be an amazing mother. I compete with my mom and dad for the title, obviously, but I consider myself her biggest fan. It's just been amazing watching her be successful in life." While best friends, Lauren and Taylor have different personalities. Lauren is Type A — "I like to have a plan, an agenda," she said — and Taylor is laid back. Both are extremely competitive, but Lauren thinks a boat is for sunbathing and Taylor uses it to go deep-sea fishing. Where they are exactly the same is in the admiration and gratitude they have for their parents. "The level of support we got from our parents is unmatched in a lot of ways," Lauren said. "They were incredible. They were encouraging, and they were there for the highs and the lows. "They pushed us to be the best we could be because they believed we could be great, but they were never aggressive in their approach. They challenged us, which made Taylor and me who we are today. We are still competitive in everything we do, and we don't cut corners. That stems from our parents instilling that in us." When they were little, Taylor was a tolerable annoyance to Lauren. On the flip side, Lauren was Taylor's idol. "She was my biggest role model, whether she liked it or not," Taylor said with a laugh. "I wanted to tag along to everything. I always had my ball with me hoping they would need an extra player." When Lauren was playing varsity soccer at Medina and Taylor was in middle school, Lauren and her friends would sometimes tell Taylor to get in goal so they could fire shots at her. "She was stopping shots from future D-I athletes who were three years older than her," Lauren said. "We always knew she was a freak of nature when it came to her athletic ability." Now that both are adults, Lauren could serve as Taylor's public relations agent. It wouldn't be an easy job, though, because Taylor, though very friendly and outgoing, won't talk about her athletic accomplishments unless asked. "She is as humble as they come," Lauren said. "I'm always the one bragging about her, for her, because she would never take the credit. I still do it to this day." The husband Not long after Taylor turned 18, her family went on vacation with the family of Jack Kay, a close business associate of Bill's. One of the members of Kay's family was his nephew, Robert Gilman, who was 23 and had already graduated with a biology degree from the University of North Florida. Taylor and Robert talked a lot on that trip to The Bahamas and instantly knew they had a ton in common, so when everyone returned to Florida, Robert, conscious of the five-year age difference, called Bill and asked if it would be OK if he took his youngest daughter on a date. Bill immediately told Robert that wasn't his department and he would have to call the boss, so Robert hung up and called Julie, who gave her approval. On their first date, Robert took Taylor to a sushi bar and learned two things: She couldn't use chopsticks and he definitely wanted to go out again. A second, third and fourth date followed, and each time he would call Julie first to make sure it was OK. Said Bill: "Julie finally said, 'Stop! I get it. You're dating my daughter.'" On June 29, 2011, before Taylor's freshman year at Florida had started, she and Robert declared themselves a couple. On April 13, 2019, they were married. Taylor's matron of honor, of course, was Lauren. "I knew early on that she was an absolutely incredible girl with an incredible family," said Robert, who is employed by Globus Medical, which works with neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons who perform complex spinal procedures. "The thing that really made her special to me was her relationship with her sister and parents and grandmother (Joan Sams). I grew up and my best friends were my cousins and family, and they had the same thing." A high school soccer coach in Ocala, Fla., for six years, Robert made it a point to give Taylor the space she needed to be a normal college student — or at least as normal as someone can be while playing two D-I sports — but attended a ton of her competitions. Taylor and Robert want to have children in the future, but don't have specific plans for doing so. Whenever they do, a great life will get even better. "I look at my kids and my family and every morning I wake up thankful," Julie said. "I'm so proud of the way they've turned out. I'm excited for what they're going to do in the future. And Taylor's husband is just like her. You talk about two people who really found each other, that's them." Robert agrees but considers himself the lucky one. "Taylor, ever since I've known her, always has been happy and optimistic and as helpful to others as she can be," he said. "She smiles all the time, and she is always looking for opportunities to help other people. She's genuine." And remarkably gifted athletically, as long as she's not running long distances or swimming. "She picks up anything taught to her athletically in an instant," Robert said. "It's amazing. Plus, she's always calm and collected. "She's so competitive, but she doesn't want people to think she cares more about sports than the people she competes against. She doesn't want to beat somebody else; she wants to beat herself. For Taylor, it was never a battle against her opponent. It was a battle against how good she was yesterday." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on Twitter.