Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/377020
ND SPORTS need to become more involved with the Irish distance runners, as well. Yet Turner did not fully expect the litany of other duties that come with the shorter designation. "There's so many things that almost anything impacts the program," he said. "I don't know if a lot of people outside the program realize that with track and field when you're hosting competitions, including cross country, you're going to have everything from A to Z, going to hiring ushers, secu- rity, the announcer, who's handling the money, tickets, from A to Z." When Turner isn't figuring out the details of each Irish competition — or often more accurately, delegating the duties of figuring out the details of each Irish competition to his assistants as former head coach Joe Piane used to do with his assistants — he turns his singular focus toward his athletes. First that singular focus brought Turner to Notre Dame, a campus he had never stepped foot on before his job inter- view in 2010. Then that singular focus nearly pulled the Chicago native away from the Midwest. Only two years into his Irish stint, schools from the SEC, the Big Ten and the Pac-12 sought his services, Turner said. Rather than let Turner head west, east or south, Piane promoted his sprints coach. "[Piane] decided he wanted me to stay here," Turner said. "So I figured I'd be somewhat considered when he decided he was going to step down. I was pretty excited at the opportunity that I possibly would have when he told me that." Piane had led the track and field program for 37 years when he made the effort to keep Turner around, even though he had been working with Turner for only two years. But in those two years, Turner had coached athletes to seven Big East titles and seven Notre Dame school records, kick-started by Patrick Feeney's indoor and outdoor 400-meter titles in 2011. In 2013, Turn- er's mentees won 10 more Big East ti- tles, followed by four in Notre Dame's first season in the ACC in 2014. "My goal as sprints coach was to try to first get some people winning, continue winning some Big East titles, and get them to the national meet," Turner said. "My thoughts when I first got here was not to be head coach at Notre Dame. That was the furthest thing from my mind." Rather, Turner came to Notre Dame for the same reasons most people make professional transitions: a step up in competition, an increase in salary and, a few years earlier, an instance of cor- porate downsizing. Following his 1992 graduation from Indiana, where he was a three-time All- American and still holds the school re- cord in the outdoor long jump, Turner went into portfolio management in Chicago. A little more than a decade later, one bank bought Turner's origi- nal employer and then another insti- tution entered the fray to the tune of another merger. By the end of the fi- nancial three-card Monte, department trimming left Turner on the outside looking in. Soon thereafter, a former high school track rival of Turner's in- vited him to help coach high school