Football coach Rich Turner is familiar with elevating an Ohio high school football program to the next level. He will attempt to do that again as the new Cardinal Huskies’ head football coach.
“It is home,” Turner told The Weekly Villager on July 25. “One of the big things you miss is that schools open up and close so fast that you don’t have a community atmosphere. I am all about the family atmosphere. It is just different and it is just a different feeling.”
Turner takes over for former Coach Chris Perrotti, who revived the Cardinal football program by leading the Huskies to three consecutive playoff berths after only qualifying for the Ohio High School Athletic Association postseason twice since the 2002 season. Although the Huskies have extended their season into the postseason the last three years, they still have yet to win their first playoff game since 2002.
That’s where Turner comes in, who will become a head coach for the first time since the 2014 season when he coached at Evans High School in Orlando, FL. Turner spent last season serving as an assistant coach at Warren John F. Kennedy High School.
As much as the Huskies have made progress over the last three seasons, they still have yet to reach that next level and Turner is determined to help them reach that goal. He has already done it once before when he took over as head coach at Normandy High School in 2003. When he became head coach, the Invaders had only won five games in the last six years but he quickly turned things around, leading Normandy to a 46-29 record from 2003-2009 including reaching the OHSAA Division II state quarterfinal. Turner was also recognized as the Division II AP Coach of the Year in 2004.
According to Turner, he became involved with football by living in Austintown, a community that loved high school football.
“I grew up where our town was like a Friday Night Lights town in Austintown,” he noted. “In my junior year we made the state semifinal. We played Cardinal Mooney in the regular season, we were ranked third in the state, and we had 15-16,000 people at Youngstown State University watching us. People who grow up say they want to play for the Buckeyes or the Browns, but I grew up saying I want to be an Austintown-Fitch Falcon.”
Turner walked on to play for the Penguins and played under revered Youngstown State University Coach Jim Tressel for one season before he retired due to nagging injuries. Although he played under Tressel for just one season, he said that he inspired him to not only become a coach but also a teacher.
“He said that everything you do is with kids, you umpire and you coach,” Turner added. “I do not see you as a nine-to-five guy in a suit and next thing you know he switched me into education the next day.”
In addition to Tressel, Turner also credited his high school football coach Dave Hartman for being a role model. Turner said that as big as Austintown-Fitch was, it did not have a lot of athletes who earned Division I scholarships and played against several schools that did but Hartman still outcoached the opposition.
Turner started coaching youth sports while he was still in college and after he graduated, served as a defensive coordinator between two Youngstown local schools before moving to Florida. He coached in Florida from 1997-2003 before returning to Ohio to take the Normandy job.
After Turner’s time at Normandy ended, he moved to Illinois for several years then moved back to Florida where he coached at five schools in a span of 11 years but spent the final five years at Haggerty High School in Oviedo, FL where his son played tight end.
“I was not leaving that. I was the offensive coordinator and he was my tight end,” Turner said. “Coaching your son is much better than being a head coach so I was not leaving that school but I had multiple opportunities to be a head coach.”
After his son graduated, Turner returned to Ohio and spent a year at Warren JFK before taking the Cardinal job. Although the Huskies are one of the smallest programs he has coached at, Turner has loved the family-like atmosphere of Huskies’ football. While he enjoyed his time as an assistant coach for the last 11 years, he is happy to once again carry the responsibilities of being a head coach.
“I am excited because I do not have to run it by someone else first to get something down,” he said. “It is nice being the head coach and not have to go through the whole process of getting a change made
