Loaded Medina girls soccer team put together hall of fame performance en route to state crown

One of the most dominating teams in Medina County history, regardless of sport, had no weakness. The 2009 Medina girls soccer team owned multiple Power Five forwards, multiple Division I college players in the midfield, multiple D-I athletes in other sports on defense and the county's greatest female athlete of all time between the pipes. The Bees called themselves "The Perfect Storm," one of the few family-friendly versions of the countless witty one-liners produced by midfielder Maura Gorman. They loved their second-year coach, Doug Coreno, certainly loved each other and were so relaxed by the time the D-I state championship game rolled around that Coreno knew all he had to do was not screw anything up. The seeds of greatness were planted years before as a talented group worked through the youth circuit. Medina was nationally ranked in 2008 before losing to archrival Strongsville in the district semifinals and returned an embarrassment of riches. Like most seasons since the school's first state semifinal appearance in 1989, the internal expectations were Columbus or bust. The transformative moment didn't come in an early-season 1-0 loss to the Mustangs, because Medina knew there would be a rematch in the absurdly deep Brunswick D-I District. A 0-0 tie with Westerville North on Sept. 29, 2009 — a team that later failed to advance out of districts — was so devastating that Coreno had a heart-to-heart with each player on the 1-hour, 45-minute bus ride back to Medina. No one remembers tears, but egos were checked. The time had come to put up or shut up. "From the outside looking in, you would think we had the flawless season and everything went great, but we didn't," said Coreno, who offered the story unprovoked. "There was a lot that went on behind the scenes. We had some individual personality clashes early in the season. "A lot of it was basically the individual goals vs. the team goals. It's not easy to put your own recognition aside. We had some bickering early about who was the true leader, who the goal scorer was, who was going to get all the recognition, who was the paper going to write about. For whatever reason, we were not clicking despite all our talent." From that moment, the Bees didn't lose again while outscoring opponents 62-2, including 29-0 in the postseason, and taking a shutout streak of 1,003 minutes, 13 seconds into the offseason. They survived a 1-0 overtime scare against state-ranked Cloverleaf in the district semifinals, demolished Strongsville 4-0 in the highly anticipated rematch and edged Walsh Jesuit 1-0 in goalie Taylor Burke's signature game, setting up a record-breaking 4-0 win over Dublin Coffman in the state championship that cemented their place in immortality. Much has changed in nearly 13 years. Coreno now coaches the Medina boys, many players have husbands, a few have children and a few live out of state. They'll relive the glory days one more time Friday night when they're inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame at The Galaxy Restaurant in Wadsworth. "I remember there being a turning point, especially for the seniors, that every game could be our last," said Gazette MVP Becca Candler, who went on to play four years at Indiana and one for the Seattle Reign of the National Women's Soccer League before a torn ACL ended her career. "We didn't want it to end. Towards the end in postseason, I really did feel like we were playing to continue on not necessarily for a state championship but because we didn't want to end playing together." The talent was so deep that Candler's team-leading 49 points do not rank in the top 10 in school history. Her running mate atop a 4-4-2 formation was Jillian Graff (Florida), a quiet speedster with enough endurance to be a two-time All-Ohioan on the 4x800-meter relay. The midfield was led by Sarah Flanders (Miami of Ohio), a bubbly ball-handling dynamo and the Northeast Ohio Conference Valley Division Player of the Year. She was joined by Gorman (Bellarmine), selfless holding midfielder Nicole Jankowski and hard-nosed future All-Big East lacrosse player Sydney Thomas (Loyola). The defense was rebuilt in the offseason but still had Melissa Hill (Ashland), a tremendous ignitor of the counterattack who possessed the ball as much as anyone. Anna Boyert (Penn State/Oklahoma State track and field) never got tired despite joining soccer practice after cross country practice each day and was tasked with marking the top opposing striker, Nicolle Varney (Ohio) was extremely disciplined and Jen Jankowski (Cleveland State) never complained after being moved from midfield to outside back. Beth Lang (Ashland), Emily Felton (Ohio Dominican) and Marissa Scullin (Slippery Rock) saw significant action off the bench. The goalie, of course, was Burke (Florida). She needs no introduction after being inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame in 2021, but the three-time state high jump champion was an elite athlete at an elite position who smothered any threat. "Oh, man, it was super impressive," Candler said of the team's talent. "I first want to say every year at Medina, that was the standard. We had incredible athletes and soccer players, so my senior year was no different. "But, geez, what a cool environment to play your high school years. I don't know a lot of people who got to say they were surrounded by talent like that at the high school level." The Bees were so dominant after the bus ride home from Westerville that memories from the blowouts are hazy at best. Medina won its next four games by a 28-1 score, tied perennial Northeast Ohio power Walsh Jesuit 1-1 in a result both teams were satisfied with and survived a 1-0 scare at Hudson when Lang scored with 23 minutes to go. The postseason gauntlet was set in place before the season even began, as Strongsville, Medina and Cloverleaf were assigned to the Brunswick District. Those teams were ranked second, fourth and ninth in the Ohio Soccer Coaches Association state poll when the seed meeting took place, and its difficulty was so unfair that the state eventually switched to super districts so the top teams were distributed more evenly. The Bees were acutely aware that if they survived the Colts and Mustangs — Coreno compared it to St. Ignatius, St. Edward and Mentor being in the same football district — they'd be nearly impossible to stop. "That was pretty unique to Northeast Ohio," Candler said. "I have friends all over the country. We've compared high school stories and high school soccer experiences, and it doesn't come close to what we had at Medina. "It was so competitive. The majority of those rosters went and played in college. The skills on the field were top notch. I don't know where else you'd find that in the country." Medina opened the postseason with 9-0 and 3-0 wins over Midview and Copley, setting up a date with the undefeated Suburban League champion Colts. Cloverleaf was no pushover with a 32-2-3 record since the start of 2008 and had first-team All-Ohio forward Katie Roberts, who went on to be the 2014 Mid-American Conference Offensive Player of the Year while starring for the University at Buffalo. When reminiscing about the 2009 team, most Medina fans overlook the importance of the 1-0 overtime win over the Colts, but Coreno and Candler agreed it was the most pivotal because of its timing. Cloverleaf could have easily won in regulation if not for a diving save by Burke and subsequent rebound that went wide, then Medina pushed the issue late in regulation to get momentum heading into OT. There, Candler took a pass with her back to the goal, turned 180 degrees and fired a bullet inside the right post. "Similar to Strongsville, Cloverleaf was a team that we grew up playing club with, so we had tight relationships with them and knew they were going to be good," Candler said. "I remember just before the overtime looking at each other and we almost had a state of panic, like, 'What is happening? We can't end it here.' "At that point your body is so exhausted that all I remember is the ball going back into the net and me falling to the ground." The build-up to the Strongsville-Medina district championship game was tremendous. An estimated 700 people piled into the Erhnfelt Soccer Complex 30 minutes before game time, but heavy rain had turned the all-natural surface into a mud pit. Officials announced the game would be postponed, leading to boos from the crowd and disappointment from the players. That held especially true for the host Mustangs, who had a 15-game home winning streak and lost their key advantage in a blink of an eye. The next 48 hours were tense as school administrators negotiated with the OHSAA. The initial proposal of playing at Brunswick's Judy Kirsch Field — now Brunswick Auto Mart Stadium — fell through, and the state ruled that Medina could host on Halloween night. Candler vividly remembers waking up that morning and heading to Medina Memorial Stadium, where dozens of parents and other supporters with brooms and sandbags worked feverishly to remove any standing water from the 70-year-old playing surface. She then smiled, knowing what was in store. "I've lived all over the country, but there's something about the fall soccer season in Northeast Ohio," she said. "The leaves are changing, there's a chill in the air and it was the perfect day to beat Strongsville 4-0." No one would have envisioned such a result after the Mustangs had eliminated the Bees four times over the prior eight seasons. They already had that early-season 1-0 win in their back pocket and featured first-team All-Ohioan Alyssa Meier (Kent State via Pittsburgh) and 2011 national player of the year Ashley Meier (Virginia Tech). Medina didn't care. The last home game of the season was going to be legendary. Graff kicked off the party by taking the ball in the midfield, beating three defenders and unleashing a 10-yard shot that found the back of the net with 23:49 left in the first half. Candler then made a move atop the box and found Lang for a deflating 2-0 lead just 10 minutes later, leading to Candler opening the second-half scoring with a right-to-left shot in which she slipped but still scored from the top of the box. Lang added another score — this time from Graff — to cap an epic performance in which the Bees outshot the Mustangs 7-1 and lifted an enormous weight off their shoulders. "There were a lot of bad feelings going on over that 72-hour period, so for us to win that game in as dominant a fashion as we did, there could be no excuse and no questions," Coreno said. "That meant a lot. Had we squeaked by, the whispers would have continued. That was a pretty firm statement, and I think our kids took all that personally. "This was not the Medina of old. We weren't second class to anybody, and they went out and showed it that night. That wasn't the state championship game because we had Walsh to come, but that game meant a lot to our program at the time." Riding an understandable emotional high heading into regionals, Medina so far outclassed Westlake (3-0) and Sylvania (4-0) that neither Coreno nor Candler recall much of anything, other than Coreno saying the games felt like preseason scrimmages. Candler, Lang and Jen Jankowski scored in the second half and Hill had two assists against the Demons, while Flanders (2), Graff and Felton found the net and Hill added two more assists against the Wildcats. As was the case against Strongsville, weather was a big factor in the Walsh Jesuit rematch on the FieldTurf at Rocky River, this time in the form of brutal winds. The Warriors controlled play with the wind at their backs in the first half, but the Bees had Burke. In that first half, Burke made nine saves, all while not seeing her team get a shot on goal. She dove left, dove right and leaped into the air, thwarting every opportunity. The nine saves were more than she had to make in 21 of the first 22 games, but her efforts allowed the Bees to limp into halftime with a scoreless tie. "You never say that a single player single-handedly wins a game, but Taylor Burke won that first half for us," Coreno said. "Taylor Burke is obviously an elite athlete in every sense," Candler added. "She's physically strong, mentally strong and emotionally strong, so I feel like by her defending the net the way that she did, she held it together for us." The players were stunned they had been dominated so thoroughly. "We went to the locker room, I'm standing in front of the girls with the assistant coaches and the girls were looking at me like death warmed over," Coreno said. "They were expecting to get chewed out. I had a big smile on my face and said, 'Guys, they can't play any better, we can't play any worse, it's still 0-0 and we've got the wind.'" Buoyed by Coreno's positive speech and a challenge from assistant Brad Wojnarowsky to play like the big-time forward she was, Candler got a steal, bolted for the goal and crushed a 26-yard shot over the head of the keeper for a stunning score with 33:59 to play. It was Medina's first attempt on frame. Coreno called the goal a "great individual effort." Candler didn't see it that way and used the word "lucky." "It was a jolt of, 'I have to get this in now or they're going to win,"' she said. While Candler said multiple times that the team 100% lived by the one-game-at-a-time philosophy, there was no doubt Medina was an unstoppable freight train heading into an afternoon kickoff Nov. 14 against heavy underdog Dublin Coffman at Columbus Crew Stadium. Fans already were tailgating as the team arrived at the stadium on an unseasonably warm day. Medina was so relaxed that Coreno and Wojnarowsky accepted an offer of free fried chicken, took it into the stadium and chowed down as the players posed for pictures and rolled around on the pristine natural grass surface at the home of Major League Soccer's Columbus Crew. Coffman arrived soon thereafter, and Coreno couldn't help but notice the Shamrocks looked like "robots." The mental game had already been won well before kickoff. "From that moment, I knew we were going to win not only because of our talent but our mindset," Coreno said. "Obviously we were focused — it's the state championship, for goodness sake — but seeing the body language of the two teams 90 minutes before kickoff, you could tell who would come away with it." The first 35 minutes didn't necessarily affirm Coreno's gut feeling, as the game was scoreless despite Medina dominating every aspect. Coreno began to overthink strategy and briefly considered pulling Flanders so she'd be 100% fresh for the second half, but didn't pull the trigger. Candler rewarded his faith by passing out of a double team to a wide-open Flanders, who crushed a shot into the upper-left corner with 1:19 remaining before halftime. Gorman then took a pass from Hill, faked left, cut right and blasted a haymaker into the upper-right corner for a 2-0 lead 10 minutes into the second half, which opened the floodgates. Graff added a full-sprint dart fewer than six minutes later and Gorman capped the scoring with 12:57 to play — the two goals were her first of the postseason — giving Medina four goals in a mere 28:32. The celebration after each goal never lost energy. The margin of victory tied the all-division record for margin of victory in a title game and remains tied for second to this day. The Shamrocks failed to record a shot on goal. "I have a visible memory of riding in the school bus around Medina Square, and we felt like celebrities because we had a community that had been supporting us with so much enthusiasm waving at us," Candler said. "It was really awesome to see how the community came out to support the entire season, but especially on our trip to Columbus. I also remember the day went by really fast — like lightning quick. "I remember it was in October — you never know what the weather is going to be like In October in Ohio —but that day was unseasonably hot. The sun was just blaring on us, and we were used to having cold games under the lights. Sarah Flanders found the net and everything rolled from there." The Bees had a celebration in the showroom of Bill Doraty Kia, then an end-of-season banquet at a local country club. Coreno can't recall who led the team in scoring or even who was all-conference — he certainly remembers the team stunningly had zero first-team All-Ohioans — but he remembered the goofy stories and behind-the-scenes fun. Chief among them were Gorman's locker room one-liners that were often rated PG-13 or "R," depending on the moment. There was blasting the Miley Cyrus hit song "Party in the U.S.A." before every game, a lucky grapefruit given to the team by middle school teacher Rocco Russo, the otherwise extremely quiet Graff's disdain for the team's obsession with Harry Potter and everyone crawling on hands and knees looking for an earring Candler lost at practice. The memories of competition fade slowly with time. The competitive days of the players are long gone, but the glory of a state championship will last forever. The Bees were, in fact, "The Perfect Storm." "That was such a special team," Candler said. "We loved playing for (Coreno and Wojnarowsky), and it was really cool to see everything come together perfectly as in the perfect storm. It sounds so cheesy, but those memories are so special to me. "I got to play in college and after college, but these are some of my favorite memories to this day. It's cool that it's being celebrated." Contact Albert Grindle at (330) 721-4043 or agrindle@medina-gazette.com.