"I was tall, but I was never fast": Garth Wurstle worked hard for Medina Sports Hall induction

Garth Wurstle is remembered as one of the best basketball players in Buckeye High history for a very simple reason: He was one of the hardest workers. A towering figure at 6-foot-8, the 1981 Buckeye graduate, Gazette MVP and Division I Robert Morris University recruit held Bucks school records for career points (1,082), points in a season (566) and career rebounds (659) until Danny Flood broke the first two marks in 2021-22. Wurstle, who will be inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame during June 17 ceremonies at The Galaxy Restaurant in Wadsworth, was far from a natural, however. Blessed with great height but not tremendous leaping ability or speed, he worked for everything he got. "I was tall, but I was never fast," said Wurstle, now 59 and living in Naples, Fla., with wife Monica, a fellow Robert Morris graduate who helps him operate their highly successful Encore Cabinets & Design business. "I was never a great leaper out of the gymnasium. I was never a lot of things. "What I was was a student of my game. I would practice, practice, practice until I performed it. That same exact skill set has served me well in business. What people don't realize is you don't have to be great at something. You just have to be good at it, over and over and over." As a high school junior, Wurstle was good at it, over and over, to the tune of an 18.8-point scoring average as the Bucks, just 7-12 when he averaged 6.4 points as a sophomore, finished 13-8. Having gotten a taste, Wurstle worked harder than ever in the offseason and averaged 25.7 points and 12.9 rebounds as a senior, when the Bucks finished 16-6. He had 28 points as Buckeye overcame a big early deficit to beat Firelands 66-64 in the Inland Conference championship game, scored at least 20 points in all but two games and had six games of at least 30 points, including a career-high 34 in a 66-63 win over Norwayne on senior night. In a season where Wadsworth (22-6) reached the Class AAA state championship, Cloverleaf (17-5) was talented enough to have beaten the Grizzlies and Medina finished 19-4, it was the relentless, hard-working kid from Mallet Creek who earned Gazette MVP. "He improved a lot," said Bob Kramer, who took over as coach from Ed Everhart prior to Wurstle's junior season. "His junior year he was big and he muscled, but he didn't finesse or drop step. He tried, but he wasn't very good at it. We'd work on that more than any other drill." There were a lot of drills. Because he had been a Scoutmaster for Wurstle's older brothers and was a friend of the family, Kramer spent a lot of time at his star player's home. On weekends when the Bucks didn't have games or on evenings after practices, he would take Wurstle back to the gym for more shooting or additional weightlifting. Wurstle, who was 241 well-muscled pounds by the time he finished his playing career at Robert Morris in 1986, was a willing participant. He'd set goals for how many times he would bench press 250 pounds, do side-to-side tip drills, jump rope, perform hundreds of leg presses and run sprints, all because he realized that if he wanted to be better than more athletically gifted D-I prospects across the state, he was going to have to work harder. "He worked hard on his game and prided himself on being a left-hand, right-hand guy," point guard and close friend Nate Howard said. "He worked hard on his handle and passing because Coach got on him a lot. He probably ended up dribbling better than me. I was just faster. "It was hard for him at the beginning because he was so tall and clumsy, but his work ethic, it was all about basketball. During Christmas break, his dad always used to come pick me up so we could work out at the gym. He kept working at it and working at it and never backed down. Quitting wasn't an option." TOUGH LOVE Wurstle is the youngest of six children, five of them boys, but he didn't get spoiled or even special treatment as the baby of the family. His father, 6-3 Herb, a former industrial arts teacher at Buckeye, was loving and fair but extremely tough, and 5-10 mother Mary was no pushover, either. Both died while Wurstle was playing at Robert Morris. "My dad was a larger than life figure," he said. "He was a good soul and a huge influence on me. He used to say, 'Garth, you're always going to be bigger than other people, so you need to look out for others because there are a lot of people in this world who aren't nice.' "He was gruff with love. He would push on you to see if you could take a pushing. My dad was an accountability freak. He didn't like the words, 'I didn't do it. It wasn't my responsibility.' He had no filter. I mean no filter. He would just tell you. He didn't care what your color was, where you were from or what you knew. He cared that when you were his student, you paid attention and stayed out of other people's business." When Wurstle's father wasn't teaching him life lessons, his older brothers were. Kramer, who now lives in Pataskala, Fla., recalls Wurstle receiving no mercy from his siblings. "Excuse my French, but they just used to beat the (crap) out of him," Kramer said. "They picked him up by his head, just roughed him up, wrestled, all that stuff. I'd be expecting Mom or Dad to step in, but they rarely did. "Garth is easily the biggest of the five boys, but back then he was just a chunky kid, the baby of the family." Asked what it was like having four older brothers, Wurstle laughed and said, "Painful." Asked to expound, he said, "Very painful." "They were a bit rough, but that's all right," he said. "Dad used to tell me I was hickory. They couldn't crack me." As Wurstle reached his teens, it was clear he was going to be very tall. He played tight end for the football team as a sophomore and spent a year on the track team, but basketball became his primary focus when he entered high school. "Between my freshman and sophomore years, if I didn't play 2,000 hours of basketball, I didn't play an hour," said Wurstle, recalling summer trips to Cleveland State with his dad so he could play in a different environment and against the best players in the area. Around that time, Herb used his industrial arts skills to build his youngest son a huge plywood dummy that had arms that extended above the rim. Every day, Wurstle would put that dummy in the driveway and shoot 100 right-hand baby hooks, 100 from the left and 100 fadeaway jumpers, but not before establishing proper low-post position, then throwing the ball off a nearby fence to himself. "I wasn't a natural shooter," he said. "There was nothing natural about me." Through hard work, Wurstle kept getting better. He committed to Robert Morris, which is located in Moon Township, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh, as a junior, but scouts continued to attend high school games in York Township. "He was a draw, for sure," Kramer said. "He had a very loyal fan base, but he just took everything in stride. He knew what he had to do and he worked. He was never a celebrity type." With Howard and Randy Haury at guard, guys like Jeff Gonser, rugged Al Brine and Nate Frambach at forward and future Class AA state discus champion Andy Wuensch coming off the bench, Buckeye went 29-14 over Wurstle's final two seasons. To put that in perspective, the Bucks were 218-274 lifetime prior to that. "He was an extremely hard worker and he had a lot of determination," said Steve Borgis, Kramer's assistant at the time. "He was always in the gym working and you could tell he wanted to be good. "He was the guy people tried to stop, for sure. It was an inside-out offense, which you never see anymore. If he got the ball, everybody just collapsed. Teams were fronting him and behind him, but he wasn't just a low-post player. He could shoot from the elbows and baseline." What made Wurstle especially effective was the fact he was a willing passer, as were his teammates. "Teams tried to double him, but he'd kick out and we'd either shoot or kick it back in," Haury said. "He didn't take a lot of bad shots and he did a nice job of presenting himself when he was open. We just threw to the hand. He worked hard at his trade." MOVING ON After playing in a number of postseason all-star games, including the All-American Cage Classic in Copley, where he squared off against future Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing, the kid from Mallet Creek left for Robert Morris. "I was completely out of my element," Wurstle said. "I wasn't that worldly of a kid. I played ball, went to school, did what I was supposed to do and kept my nose cleaned." Wurstle also never stopped working. He broke his ankle as a freshman in 1981-82, when the Colonials won the Eastern College Athletic Conference Metro Tournament and lost 94-62 to third-seeded Indiana in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Coached by the legendary Bob Knight and led by superstar point guard Isiah Thomas, the Hoosiers went on to win the national championship. Wurstle redshirted in 1982-83, when Robert Morris won its conference tournament to earn one of the two 12 seeds in the Mideast Region. The Colonials defeated Georgia Southern in that play-in game before being nipped 55-53 by fifth-seeded Purdue in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Robert Morris didn't return to the NCAA Tournament in Wurstle's final three seasons, but his playing time picked up considerably over his final two years. After averaging 1.3 points and 1.2 rebounds in 1983-84, those numbers went up to 8.6 and 6.3 in 1984-85 and 8.0 and 4.9 in 1985-86. Wurstle appeared in all 28 games in each of his last two seasons while earning degrees in accounting and communications management. "I got a beautiful education at Robert Morris," he said. Having played against the likes of future NBA stars Rik Smits (Marist) and A.C. Green (Oregon State) in college, Wurstle worked for General Motors before moving to Florida in 2000. He's owned several businesses, including the cabinet and countertop company he and his wife now run, and made numerous investments, most of them profitable. Wurstle didn't want to divulge specific figures, but his home is valued at close to seven figures and he and Monica own two Porsches and two boats, which they use often due to their love of water. Gregarious, fun-loving and definitely still in touch with his 1970s and '80s Buckeye roots, Wurstle loves to rattle his upscale neighborhood by driving an old company van or truck home from work and leaving it parked in plain view. What he is most proud of is using the work ethic, discipline and dedication he learned through basketball to succeed in business — and in life. "No one would have thought I'd be a multimillionaire," Wurstle said. "The only reason I am is because of what basketball taught me: Repeat correctly, over and over and over again, or modify because it's not working. "I've always looked at life like a scoreboard, just like in basketball. There's a home team and an away team. How many points can I score for the home team? That's my goal, now how can I get there?" More than 40 years later, Wurstle's favorite home team, no matter how far away he is, remains the Buckeye Bucks. "It was beautiful growing up at Buckeye High School," he said. "It's a beautiful community, a beautiful school and I got a lot of support from a lot of people. "Do me a favor and say thank you to every teammate, teacher and coach I had at Buckeye. That's the only reason I made it to where I'm at today." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on Twitter.