Rootstown girls soccer senior Rylee Durbak scored 15 goals and had seven assists last season to earn the Portage Trail Conference’s Player of the Year honors.
Tom Nader/Portage Sports

By Tom Nader

Publisher and Editor

Rylee Durbak was in Kindergarten when she first remembers realizing that her family was different than most of her peers.

Teachers playfully commented that she was the last Durbak.

The baby Durbak that essentially was the end of an education era at Rootstown.

Now a senior, Durbak understands that her family does hold some historical context.

But so does her soccer game.

Family wise, Durbak is the youngest of 10 children to Paul and Maureen Durbak.

All the children graduated from Rootstown and include Megan (Class of 2002), Bridget (2005), Joe (2007), Paul John (2010), Grace (2012), Maggie (2014), Luke (2016), Teddy (2018), Annie (2020) and lastly Rylee (2023).

Soccer wise, Durbak is a leader on a team filled with talented players and finished her junior season with 15 goals and seven assists.

As the reigning Portage Trail Conference Player of the Year, Durbak has already made an impact on the league and her coach, but still has the entire 2022 season to write her closing chapter.

Whatever that is, Rootstown head coach Jason Opritza said he feels honored.

“Honestly, it has been my privilege to coach her. She is a once-in-a-career type of player for a coach,” Opritza said.

“I just marvel at her touches,” he added. “She, honestly, looks like she is dancing out there on the soccer field. There are times I am not sure how she doesn’t fall. She moves with such grace and control.”

Rootstown girls soccer head coach Jason Opritza describes senior Rylee Durbak’s footskills on the field as if she is dancing with the ball. “I just marvel at her touches,” the coach said.
Tom Nader/Portage Sports

There is a balance, though, because Opritza is also quick to point out that Durbak can play with top-level speed and unusual aggressiveness.

“I remember a play from last year when Rylee started a run from the right side of the field and she sprinted all the way to the left side of the field,” Opritza said. “It looked like the ball was destined to go out of bounds, but Rylee raced it down and trapped it before it went out of bounds. She settled the ball, crossed it and we ended up scoring off of a play that only Rylee could have created.”

And then there are some footskills that only Durbak can perform at game speed.

Her signature move has become nearly impossible for her teammates to perfect and even Opritza can only work through the move in a drastically slower fashion.

The move includes Durback pulling the ball behind her, she steps on it with her right foot, pushes it behind her left foot and uses a bounce, a hop and catches the ball with her left foot.

If it sounds complicated, that is because it is.

“It is her signature move,” Opritza said. “I have never seen anyone do it before.”

Opritza and Durbak’s teammates struggle to mimic the maneuver, but then watch Durbak do it repeatedly, perfectly, within seconds.

“Only she can really do it,” Opritza said.

Durbak began playing soccer when she was 5 and it has been a sport of choice ever since. By third grade, she had advanced to club soccer, where she said she began to “gain a lot more confidence” as a player.

Her siblings had a role in that, too.

“Growing up, I think I found myself through them,” Durback said of her brothers and sisters. “We would play pick-up games in the backyard because everyone in our family loves soccer. We would all play and as the youngest, it was really exciting to be with them. To get their approval meant a lot to me.”

Which has proven to be a characteristic that has carried with Durbak through all of these years.

Rylee is dedicated to making herself better and elevating everyone else around her,” Opritza said. “The most important part is that she does it without drawing attention to herself. She is not trying to be the best player by talking about it. She is trying to be the best player by playing the best.”

It is a mentality that Durbak describes with simplicity.

“I hate the feeling like I could have done more. I have the opportunity, so why would I not work hard to do it,” she said.

Her opportunity is also one that brings emotion with it when she thinks back to all of the sacrifices her parents and siblings made along the way.

“I get emotional when I think about it, to be honest,” Durback said about her family’s sacrifices. “Because our family is so big, there were times some people went without. Most of the time, it was my mom and dad. Sometimes it makes me want to cry, but I know how much we all love each other and I know that is what it has always been about.”

Looking back on the years of schedule juggling, Paul Durbak still is not sure how they did it all. One thing that helped was a whiteboard that Maureen said they would use to keep track of all the events.

“We would tell the kids, if you are not on the whiteboard, it is your fault,” Paul Durbak said. “We got to as many things as we possibly could, but there were times, obviously, that we would need to find ride help and looking back, I am not really sure how we did it all.”