Medina County Sports Hall of Fame: Life has taken state runner-up Bees cross country team to many places

Life has taken the members of the 2010 Medina boys cross country team along vastly different paths spread across the country, but they are grounded by the enduring life lessons learned both when the Bees stood atop the podium and when they came up just a little short. Seniors David Knack, Kevin Paradise, Alex Fotheringham and Brent Gaither led Medina on a mission to win a state championship. Joined by juniors Brad Palocko and Robert Robinson and sophomore Tommy Menyes, the Bees came as close as possible to achieving that goal. Louisville edged Medina 125-126 for the Division I state title at Scioto Downs. The Leopards had a composite time of 1:20:36.50 to the Bees' 1:20:36.90, or an average of 16:07.30 to 16:07.38. Coming so close has earned the 2010 Medina team induction into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame. The Bees and other inductees will be honored at a June 14 banquet at the Galaxy Conference Center in Wadsworth. "The things that really matter, the ability to work hard and put your mind to year after year of effort towards a larger goal and the ability to work with someone you may or may not get along with all the time toward a larger goal are the pieces that actually stuck with me," Gaither said. "The disappointment of that day was real and it sucked to lose by one point, but I think getting to be around a successful program and see all the cool stuff everyone is doing today is the stuff that actually matters." Gaither currently lives in Salt Lake City and works as the director of software engineering for a small company. He still uses the lessons learned at Medina to build a successful work culture. Palocko is a doctor finishing up a fellowship in critical care at the University of Cincinnati. He earned his bachelor's degree from Heidelberg, completed medical school at Ohio University and did his residency in emergency medicine at Cleveland Clinic Akron General. He is married to wife Kristen. Fotheringham is a captain in the Air Force and currently stationed in Las Vegas. Paradise is an apprentice in the Cleveland chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and married to wife Alyssa. Knack resides in Naples, Fla., where he is a manager for Gordon Food Services. "I'm happy to have had the experiences that I did on the team," Fotheringham said. "Learning work ethic and dealing with adversity, there was a good life lesson in working hard and still coming in second place and it being all right. "Even though we didn't win a state championship by a single point, we learned a lot from it and it was a good life lesson." Knack led the way at the state meet, finishing eighth in 15:38.7, while Paradise (15:58.0) was 25th, Paocko (16:17.3) was 54th, Fotheringham (16:19.5) was 61st, Gaither (16:23.4) was 65th, Robinson (16:40.3) was 96th and Menyes (16:52.9) was 106th. The senior quartet was motivated to finish its final high school season on top after watching as freshmen the 2007 team led by individual state champion and Medina County Sports Hall of Famer Donny Roys win the team championship, which is still the only state title for the illustrious program. "For a lot of us in our freshman year, we saw that 2007 team go to state and win state by a margin you just don't see," Paradise said. "We had that in the back of our minds for the rest of our time in high school. We knew that it could be done and it became our goal right from the beginning." That pursuit got off to a slow start. Only Knack ran at the 2008 state meet, finishing 60th individually, as the Bees took fifth. The next season, Paradise, Menyes, Gaither, Knack and Palocko all got their feet wet at the state meet, but only Paradise (49th) finished in the top 50 as Medina placed 11th as a team. In 2010, everyone was locked in from the start of summer workouts. The Bees won invitational after invitational and entered the state meet with the top time in D-I at any of the regionals, winning at Tiffin (1:20:13.81) behind Knack's third-place run of 15:34.63. "Myself and my teammates, we regrouped and hammered down on some of the fundamentals (over the summer)," Knack said. "Focus on what you need to focus on leading into the race and don't let any of the distractions get in the way. Trust the person next to you is going to do their job and just do what you need to do. "A lot of that comes from experience. As a junior and senior you learn to stay calm and don't let the moment become bigger than what it is." Medina also got a helping hand from a number of the 2007 state championship runners, who came back and trained with the team over the summer. "We would run with some of those guys or hear stories from them," Palocko said. "That was something we wanted to recreate. When you are part of a legacy like at Medina with running, you don't want to be the group that sees it take a step back." Man with the vision Supplying the Bees with all the information and strategy they needed was legendary coach Milt Place. His ability to strike the right balance of making running fun and putting in the necessary work was unparalleled and showed throughout his career. "I would not have ever dreamed of the position I was in without (Place)," Knack said. "He believed in me when I didn't even believe in myself. Milt having this goal and dream while being a Rainman for numbers and knowing how to do things was amazing. "To pick his head was to open up a chapter of a book that you thought was lost. The stuff he knew was revolutionary." In nearly three decades coaching at Medina, Place mentored 15 state-qualifying teams, earned Gazette Coach of the Year 10 times and was Gazette Coach of the Decade in 2020. While still coaching the Bees, Place died from an abdominal aortic aneurysm on Aug. 22, 2021 at the age of 69. He was inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame the following year. "There's not many coaches that have raised as many successful distance runners as he has," Gaither said. "It was pretty awesome to get to run under Milt. He had a large impact on so many people's lives and he had an ability to bring together teams of 60 people. It's a hard thing to do, but he did it with ease." Place was particularly keen when it came to numbers and had a fantastic ability to motivate individuals by taking their current time and showing how they could progress over their careers. The 2010 group was able to take his numbers and zero in on exactly where each runner needed to be to achieve the team's goals. "We were doing everything to the letter that we could," Paradise said. "If we were told we were doing a specific workout and a specific person was told they should be running these splits, they ran those splits within five seconds. Everything was very much calculated out." When it came to the state meet, the numbers and splits did not work out in the Bees' favor by the narrowest of margins. "First and foremost, it was just a good group of people to be around," Palocko said. "We had a combination of people that were a little bit older and a little younger to almost pull off a fun and exciting run at the end there. The coaching staff as well had a big role in that." Because Robinson and Menyes beat their counterparts from Louisville as the sixth and seventh finishers for their teams, all the Bees needed was one spot of improvement when it came to finishers on team qualifiers. Knack was 0.9 behind Reynoldsburg's Khalid Omar from moving from sixth among team participants into fifth. Paradise was 1.9 seconds away from jumping from 16th to 15th by passing Dublin Coffman's Grant Onken. Palocko was four seconds behind Cincinnati Elder's Corey Zielinski to go from 32nd to 31st. Fotheringham was 0.5 behind Coffman's John Sotos when it came to going from 35th to 34th and Gaither was one second from passing Walsh Jesuit's Matt Krakora and going from 37th to 36th. "We were one point off," Knack said. "It doesn't sting as bad as it did years back, but it still brings in the what ifs. If I could have just been one place higher, we could have gotten it done." Competitive fire As great as winning was for the Bees — and they did plenty of it, including capturing the Northeast Ohio Conference Valley Division by a margin of 33-101 over Solon — it was the few times they did not finish on top of the podium that really motivated the highly competitive group of athletes to reach new heights. Medina finished second to Cincinnati Elder by four points at the Galion Cross Country Festival in the middle of September. On the bus ride home, the Bees looked at each other and knew it was time to take things to the next level, which they did. "Galion was the first time we lost a meet that year," Gaither said. "We were all so mad about it. I think at that point we realized it wasn't even about winning anymore. It was about total domination of every single meet going forward. Noticing how upset everyone was to lose a random invitational set our expectations for everyone the rest of the year." Not only was Medina competing against with other teams, its runners competed to bring out the best in each other. No one was interested in settling into a certain order and everyone was looking to get faster each week. At Galion the finishing order was Paradise, Palocko, Gaither, Knack and Menyes in the top five. At the conference meet, it was Knack, Paradise, Palocko, Menyes and Robinson. At the Lorain County Community College District it was Knack, Paradise, Palocko, Gaither and Robinson and at the Tiffin Regional it was Knack, Paradise, Gaither, Palocko and Robinson. "We were all really competitive," Palocko said. "We all thought that at any given time we could go 1-2-3-4-5 in any given order. There were certainly people that were more talented and more consistent than others, but the competitiveness drove the group of us to push each other every week." The lesson of always striving to be better continued to be a theme for many team members throughout their college careers and into adulthood. Chasing or pursuing something, they know, is a good thing. "Be encouraged that things didn't go the way you wanted them to, because now you have to adapt," Knack said. "When you have to adapt, you grow. I think that whole experience of not winning helped us all grow into better individuals." Contact John Urchek at jurchek@medina-gazette.com.