Will Tyler Turner Turn around #YJNation?
The Sheridan Yellowjackets new football coach is ready to woo fans
The Sheridan School District is lucky to land Tyler Turner as the Yellowjackets new head football coach.
Young. Energetic. Visionary.
Turner is the kind of coach small town football programs in south Arkansas need to maneuver the modern high school football landscape.
Turner spoke Sunday afternoon at Grace Church in East End where he addressed about 30 people, including school board members Stan Hancock and Clarissa Wallace and Sheridan School District Superintendent Karla Neathery, at a meet-and-greet. Turner discussed his philosophy about building a football program that needs a hardcore turn-around from Pee Wee players to high school seniors.
Last year, the 6A East Yellowjackets finished the season 3-7 overall. The team had never won a state championship.
Standing on a stage highlighted with blue and gold neon vertical lights and a huge backdrop screen with the Yellowjacket logo, Turner discussed how critical it is to get young players interested in football at a young age in order to build a winning team.
But for Turner – and he made this perfectly clear – football at any age is about more than winning every game.
Character building is an integral part in Turner's coaching. That's because there is life after high school football. Coaches often spend more time with players than any other adult in their lives. It's up to coaches to instill lasting values into teenagers' lives and not just develop them into winning machines under the Friday night lights.
"It’s about the growth of a player – emotionally, socially, mentally, physically and spiritually,” Turner told me after his presentation to the Yellowjacket faithful. "We want to help our players grow. We want those guys to be better fathers, husbands and better contributors to society. That’s our goal. Winning is a byproduct of that and success is a byproduct."
Turner’s Desire for Small-Town Sports
Turner was offered the Yellowjackets head football coach job in April.
Previously, he was defensive coordinator at Sylvan Hills for a year and the head coach at Jackson Prep in Mississippi for a year. He began his head coaching career at Liberty Tech Magnet High School, a Class 3A program in Jackson, Tenn.
At Liberty Tech, he led the team to its first undefeated regular season in school history, won a conference championship, made it to the state semifinals, and finished 13-1 overall. He was the youngest coach to ever be named West Tennessee Coach of the Year for all sports. The next year, Liberty Tech was a state runner-up. He then took the head coaching position at Olive Branch, Miss.
Turner apparently has the magic touch for turning around programs.
At Olive Branch, he inherited a team with a 14-game losing streak. Turner’s team went 12-2 and garnered a number three ranking in the state. Turner spent three years at Olive Branch with a 33-8 record.
His next stop was at Goodpasture Christian School in Madison, Tenn. Goodpasture, too, needed to turn around its program with a 7-26 record in three years. He turned Goodpasture around to a 9-3 season.
Turner received his bachelor’s degree from Arkansas State University and is nearing completion of his master’s degree in Educational Leadership. His wife is originally from Arkansas, and Turner said he and his wife wanted to be closer to family.
Perhaps more impressive than Turner’s record is his influence on players and his ability to get recruiters to focus on his players. Turner has had 33 players sign to play college football, including 13 to Division I schools.
On Sunday, he told the audience he loved the "Mom and Pop" restaurants in Sheridan and had actually been looking for a coaching job in a small town. At the end of his presentation, the Yellowjacket cheerleaders took to the stage to teach him a school cheer. He gave it his all.
Coaching in a small town doesn't come without pressure.
In southern one-team small towns like Sheridan, football is a religion. Town folk live and breathe football from one Friday night to the next. Coffee shop conversations revolve around Friday night’s game, and arguments almost always ensue because someone didn’t agree with a play, a call or the final score.
Rivalries between teams are fiercely legendary, which make schools invest hundreds of thousands, if not millions, into sports to one up their competitors.
Sheridan is no different.
The school and community donors have spent, and raised, hundreds of thousands of dollars for its stadium and synthetic turf in recent years. With so much invested, Yellowjackets fans are ready for a winning season. Turner hopes he can give them one.
"Our guys, our seniors have really led the way," Turner said. "They are a great group that wants to be different than the team has been in the past. They are tired of losing and they are ready to win. The kids have worked extremely hard this summer and this offseason. I want them to see the fruit of their labors because they have put in the hours and the time in. I have yet to have a bad day in Sheridan."
Turner has faith in the Sheridan community, too, as much as he does in his players.
“I think the Sheridan community is going to support every program,” he said. “Like I told the guys when you start winning just imagine what the support is going to be like. We want to build something the community is going to be proud of as well as make football an important thing here in Sheridan. That’s what we are trying to establish within our program.”
You Better Be Intense
While a conference or state championship is naturally on the radar, Turner first asks his players for one thing: To match his intensity every day.
“At the end of the day we are going to build a relationship with the kids,” he said. “We are going to have fun and joke around in the locker room, but when we cross over into that weight room or that football field there’s an intensity that has to be set. We want our kids to match our intensity.”
Turner said he challenges his coaches daily to make sure they are setting intensity for their position groups so players can follow their lead.
“We want to have fun while we are working, but at the end of the day we have a goal in mind and it takes work to accomplish that.”
While many fans want the Yellowjackets to win every game, Turner doesn’t see football that way.
“If we focus on just winning football games, we are missing the boat,” Turner said.
Turner said while he was at Olive Branch he did a study that showed that his team put in over 1,000 hours of practice in one season.
“At the end of the day there are 480 minutes guaranteed football for a high school football team in a season. That’s 10 games. We practiced eight hours last week, over eight hours. If we only focus on winning, we aren’t going to be very fulfilled as a program.”
