A fitting tribute to 'Burk' — Orrville names track after longtime coach
Under head coach Mike Burkholder, right, the Orrville High boys track and field team won the 1999 Div. II state championship.
His teams owned it long enough, so it’s probably fitting the track at Orrville High School will now bear the name of Mike Burkholder.
Late in April the Orrville City School District and board of education made sure the honor happened quickly in order to be appreciated by Burkholder, the longtime OHS track and field coach now battling gastroesophageal cancer, an illness that forced his recent retirement from his job as principal at Northwestern High School.
Orrville Mayor Dave Handwerk, who coached the Orrville girls team for a time while Burkholder led the boys, delivered the news to "Burk" in a recent telephone call. Burkholder’s wife, Becky, recorded video of her husband receiving the honor and posted it to a Facebook page, “Burk’s Team,” where many of his friends and former athletes have stayed in touch as Burkholder continues his fight with cancer.
“He was so surprised, and in typical Mike Burkholder fashion, he was very humbled by their gesture,” said Becky Burkholder, who also took a leave from her job with the Northwestern schools to care for her husband. “I have heard him many times over the years saying that it wasn’t him climbing into the starting blocks, throwing the implements, jumping into pits or over bars."
Becky Burkholder said her husband always gave credit to other people involved. "He always said his success as a coach was a collective effort of finding good coaches for the program, having an eye for what event is the best for the athletes and making the athletes competitive while having fun," she said. "It also helped to coach in districts that supported him as a coach and supported the athletes as well."
Tyrone Mosley was both an athlete and assistant coach for Burkholder at Orrville and took over as head coach when Burkholder left the school district for Northwestern.
“He would never want people to sit back and feel sorry for him; he wouldn’t want people to think that,” Mosley said. “But this is a time that he deserves to reflect and look at all the things he’s done in his lifetime. He has a passion for everything he does, so it’s a great honor.”
Burkholder, 57, coached at Orrville from 1986-2005 and was the defensive coordinator for the 1998 OHS football team that won the state championship.
On the track, sporting his trademark green fluorescent hat, Burkholder guided the Red Rider boys to a second-place finish at the state track meet in 1993, a third-place finish in 1998 and then to the pinnacle the following season as Orrville captured its first and only state track championship in 1999.
Under Burkholder the Red Riders lost just 17 times in 19 seasons (154-17) and had 57 individuals and relays make it to state with 27 earning All-Ohio status and 10 becoming state champions. Orrville also won titles in both the All-Ohio League and Heartland Conference, and upon his departure, athletes from his tenure owned 13-of-16 school records in track and field.
While at Northwestern, Burkholder led the Husky boys to the 2013 Wayne County Athletic League title in 2013 and two runner-up finishes and had 16 state qualifiers with a dozen earning All-Ohio honors.
“He’s a great motivator, he was tough and Mike’s a great competitor,” said Mosley, who was coaxed back into the program by Burkholder as an OHS senior after spending the previous season on the baseball team. “He was always walking around the track trying to find a way to muster up a few more points. He had a way of getting to athletes. He had a way to get you to run through a brick wall for him, just a fierce competitor.”
In his 25-year career, his teams never had a losing season, and his 226-32 lifetime record equates to an incredible 87.6 winning percentage.
Burkholder graduated from Waynedale, where he was an all-league football player, and from Ashland College. His first teaching job was at New Bremen in Northwest Ohio, and in 1986 he came back to Wayne County when he was hired to teach junior high science at Orrville.
Burkholder moved to the high school science department while coaching football under the legendary Mo Tipton, then was named defensive coordinator when Bill McMillan took over for Tipton. Burkholder taught until 2003 when he became the OHS dean of students and stayed in that role until leaving for Northwestern after the 2004-05 school year.
Burkholder continued to influence young people as an administrator and coach for more than a decade. Then as the 2017-18 school year began to wind down, the nightmare began.
In April 2018 Burkholder began having occasional trouble swallowing when he was eating and didn’t even mention it to his wife until the summer.
“It was more of an annoyance than anything because he never choked,” Becky Burkholder said. “It didn’t seem to either of us like it was something that required a call to the doctor because other than that weird swallowing problem he felt fine. He had no other symptoms, no unexplained weight loss or gain, nothing.”
His regular doctor wasn’t alarmed either but referred Burkholder to Dr. Robert Cebul for an endoscopy just to make sure. “We both honestly felt that either his esophagus was constricted or he had an allergy of sorts,” Becky Burkholder said.
The test, thought to be routine, instead found Burkholder had a cancerous tumor where the esophagus and the top of the stomach joined, and he immediately started both radiation and chemotherapy.
Eventually Burkholder went to Columbus for surgery, where what was supposed to be a minimally invasive procedure became much more. Despite the treatments, Burkholder’s cancer had spread, and his stomach was removed in a major surgery in mid-February 2019.
A month later biopsies from the surgery revealed cancerous lymph nodes, so it was back into post-operative chemo in April. A year after the initial diagnosis, in September, the scans were clear, only to return in December. The treatment goal then became to keep the cancer from getting worse.
In March of this year, the cancer proved itself once again to be too aggressive for treatment. It was then that Burkholder, having lost more than 150 pounds, felt too weak to handle any more, and since then he’s entered care through Ohio’s LifeCare Hospice.
“Obviously I’m very proud of him and all that he’s accomplished, and although I am having a hard time believing that his job here on Earth is done, I have to accept this as God’s plan for us both,” Becky Burkholder said.
The Burkholders have four children and eight grandchildren with a ninth on the way.
As word of Burkholder’s illness spread, hundreds responded, sharing stories of the impact he’s made on their lives.
Jon Ritchie, the Orrville superintendent, never worked directly with Burkholder but was in complete support of the board’s decision to name the track at Red Rider Stadium in his honor.
“He led Orrville to its only state track title,” Ritchie said, “but the feedback I’ve gotten from folks that he coached and folks he worked directly with, he was more than that. He was just a quality person who did great work shaping young individuals, not just as athletes, but as people.”
Orrville grad Andy Vernon is one of nearly a dozen of Burkholder’s former track athletes who went on to coach the sport at OHS.
“Coach Burkholder’s positive impact on former students in two different school districts is a direct reflection on his ability to teach, commitment to care, willingness to listen with just the right amount of patience to help kids see and reach their full potential,” Vernon said. “Burk planted the seeds for countless students to grow into responsible, young adults. He is a Hall of Fame coach and a Hall of Fame person. Naming the track at Red Rider Stadium after him brings Mike’s journey as an educator and coach full circle.”
“This is something that’s well deserved,” Mosley said. “It’s pretty cool to be working at this place because we know what Mike stood for. He’s lived a great life. And that’s one legacy to pass on to us, you know, right in the ending days we can, we can look and say, ‘Mike did this for us’ or ‘Mike did this for me.’”