While he was too soft spoken to admit it, Frank Hurd never faced a challenge on the basketball court as tough as the 1941-42 season.

It was Hurd’s first season as Medina coach. The Bees were awful, and Hurd had never experienced losing as a player for Hiram High School and Hiram College and as a record-setting coach at Lodi.

Despite all of Hurd’s top-notch abilities as a teacher and leader of young men, the losses began to mount. Medina began the year 0-11, and the prospects for victory were bleak with a Northern Ohio League game at Wellington, which won the first meeting 34-15, next on the schedule.

Surely, Hurd was well aware of the road ahead. Medina basketball was a bottomless pit. The Bees were fresh off a winless season and had just seven wins over the six years prior to Hurd’s arrival.

Before the school year began, Medina knew where to find its next coach. The Lodi Tigers were a powerhouse under Hurd, coming within one point of the 1930 state tournament. They won at least six Medina County League regular-season titles and six more in the tournament, including five straight from 1937-41.

Hurd was a borderline icon, so Medina made him an offer he couldn’t refuse — a $1,000 raise.

The excitement in Medina was undeniable when it was learned the Lodi legend had been lured away from the southwestern part of the county. Hurd’s first game — a 29-14 loss to Sharon — brought in more money in ticket sales than the entire previous season.

Now, Hurd was still looking for his first win. Wellington was to dedicate a new gymnasium, and Elyria Chronicle-Telegram sports editor Russ Davies not-so-boldly predicted the Dukes would win because “everybody beats Medina.”

Not on this night.

Playing an almost perfect defensive game and receiving key contributions from guard Angie Gorfido (game-high 9 points) and center Ted Elliott (7 points), Medina took quarter leads of 7-3, 14-9 and 22-14 before going to one of Hurd’s staples — the stall — to win going away, 26-14.

Fueled by breaking what was at least a 25-game losing streak, Medina won three of its final five games to finish the year 4-13. On paper, the record was a failure, but it was the Bees’ most wins in eight years.

At the postseason banquet, Hurd stunned the crowd.

“The Wellington game provided me with a bigger thrill than any county championship I ever won,” he said.

Medina’s improvement in Hurd’s second season was stunning. The Bees had their first winning season in the NOL at 6-4, finished second in the league behind defending Class B state champion Clearview and tied a school record with 10 wins.

“He taught me how to fake and play the game,” Elliott said. “He did that and he was so patient with you. I never heard the man yell in my life.

“It was a shock to us (when we beat Wellington). It was great to win — it always is.”

At the time, Hurd had won more games than anyone in Medina County history. For his efforts, he will be inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame — sponsored by the Medina Breakfast Kiwanis and the Gazette — on June 16 during ceremonies at The Galaxy Restaurant in Wadsworth.

Hurd was born in 1905 in the tiny town of Hiram during World War I and grew up to be a star player at Hiram High. He later moved on to become one of the greatest players in the history of Hiram College, culminating with his induction into the school’s athletic hall of fame in 1968.

His beginnings at Lodi were humble. In 1928, Hurd’s first teaching and coaching contract was signed in an administrator’s cornfield, and he immediately went to work turning the Tigers into the most dominating program in the 30-plus-year history of the Medina County League.

Hurd’s methods were simple: Play the game hard and disciplined. Everything else will take care of itself. The way he instructed his players, however, was unique at the time.

“He taught you how to play the game and how to do things,” Elliott said. “I hadn’t had that from the previous coach. Granted, I started all four years as a center, but the first two years I wandered around a lot.

“He got right out on the floor with you. He’d go into a scramble with what he was trying to get us to do. He would show us instead of standing over there telling you how to do it.”

During games, Hurd rarely spoke because his players were taught so well in practice. He was so quiet, in fact, a referee was stunned when Hurd simply stood up to protest a call without saying a word.

His main motivating tool during games? A simple but stern clap of the hands.

Success came quickly, as Lodi won the first of its six titles during Hurd’s first season, which set the stage for the most dominating team the county had seen.

Led by thick-boned center Bob Crum, the 1929-30 Tigers were unstoppable. They went 12-0 in the MCL, winning by an average score of 37-13. In the MCL Tournament, Lodi won its four games by a 130-61 cumulative score.

By taking the county title, Lodi earned an automatic bid to the Wooster Class B Sectional. Now 20-1, the Tigers squeaked by Polk (18-15) and drilled Doylestown (30-17) behind 23 points from Crum.

That set up the title game against Wayne County League power Rittman.

In that era, which featured jump balls after every basket and slow-paced, low-scoring games, the teams that advanced to the sectional finals automatically moved on to the Kent State District.
Rittman won the game 20-10 and received the higher district seed.

At Kent, Crum kept piling up the points and Lodi kept winning. Stow was first up in a 14-13 triumph, followed by Mayfield in a 31-19 decision in which Crum hit for 18 points.

Finally, it was Austintown Fitch vs. Lodi in the district semifinals to determine one of the eight teams that would battle for the state championship in Columbus.

Unfortunately for the Tigers, Crum (10 points) received no help and Lodi lost 14-13.

The Tigers defeated Medina, which was stunningly allowed to skip sectionals after the state forgot to place it in a tournament, 26-25 in the district’s third-place game.

Despite falling one basket shy of reaching Columbus, Lodi’s tournament run — essentially ending in what is now the Sweet 16 — was the most successful the county had seen until Wadsworth advanced to the Class AAA state title game 51 years later.

Lodi reached district play just one more time under Hurd — losing by two points to undefeated Hartville in 1939 — but the accomplishments kept coming.

Cases in point:

• Hurd’s OHSAA Tournament record was 11-13, while the 12 other MCL teams combined to go 9-27 during his tenure.

• Hurd’s MCL Tournament record was a stunning 37-7, including wins in the final 19 games he coached from 1937-41.

• Lodi placed in the top three of the 13-team county tournament 12 times in 13 seasons, meaning it qualified for the OHSAA sectionals every year but one.

• The Tigers never lost more than three games in MCL play during a single season.

When Hurd left Medina after the 1943-44 school year to become principal and coach at Fairview, he had compiled a documented record of 200-82, including 181-46 at Lodi. The totals are incomplete, as seven seasons are missing information.

Only Wadsworth’s Dave Sladky and Brunswick’s Joe Mackey have surpassed the 200-win total since.

Much like he did at Medina, Hurd quickly rebuilt Fairview from a Southwestern Conference bottom-feeder into a contender. The Warriors went 2-11 in his first season, but Hurd ended his coaching career with a league championship in 1951-52.

Hurd left the coaching ranks to concentrate on his principal duties at Fairview High. He retired from there in 1964, then became a supervisor for the Medina County Board of Education until 1970.
That’s when he fell in love with horses. Hurd raised several prolific trotters, with a number of them racing at Northfield.

What stuck with people most, however, was his personality as a quiet, caring leader. Whether it was on the court showing his players the ropes or off it when he invited them over to his house for dinner after games, Hurd had a way of treating people the way they wanted to be treated.

Though he frequently attended Hiram basketball games — he even received a standing ovation in the 1980s — Hurd never moved back home and fell in love with Medina County. He remained an area resident until his death in 2001 at the age of 95.

Elliott still believes Hurd is responsible for steering Medina basketball in the right direction. The Bees didn’t experience notable success until the late 1950s, but without Hurd bringing life to the program, it may have never happened.

“I think Frank started the ball rolling in basketball,” Elliott said. “There would maybe be 20 people in the audience win or lose. We’d play in that old auditorium and it didn’t look like much. It got a little better after we started winning.

“I’m 86 years old, so it’s a long time ago. You just remember the guy as a man. He was a wonderful man. He really was.”

Contact Albert Grindle at (330) 721-4043 or agrindle@medina-gazette.com.

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