VIRGINIA BEACH, VA (WTKR)- Casey Turner arrived with the motto of building Princess Anne football brick-by-brick. He's ready to build the Cavaliers into a contender.
"It's something where we've torn everything down and we're starting from the ground up," he noted.
There's a lot of building to be done with the program, but Princess Anne believes the right foundation is now set. Enter the new head coach, who took over the program back in February.
"Princess Anne is a very proud school district, a great community," Turner said. "It's something that I kind of wanted to reignite fire under and come in and put my own twist on things and try to get it turned around."
On the surface, Turner has his work cut out for him. The Cavs enter the season on a 37-game losing streak and have only posted three winning campaigns since the turn of the century. Last year, player numbers dipped to the point where the team had to forfeit a scheduled game against Green Run. The new leader, however, has wasted no time getting to work.
"We started out in the weight room with about 12-15 kids and just through word of mouth and hitting the hallways and getting to the middle schools, we're at about 68 right now, so been able to build up trust in the program a little bit more," the head coach pointed out.
"The more people, the better chance we have," added senior running back Robert Allen. "Now that we have a new coach that doesn't give up on us and he brought in even more coaches that don't give up on us, we definitely have a chance here."
Turner was a quarterback standout at Great Bridge during his high school days and went onto play at UConn and Elizabeth City State. After serving as an assistant at both the high school and college levels, he's getting the chance to run his own program and engineer a turnaround. His influence is already showing as everybody is doing their part to help build things back up.
"The kids have done a great job of recruiting kids back out to the program, kids from other sports," said Turner. "My assistant coaches have done a great job if they see a kid in the hallway, 'hey, who are you?,' and trying to get those guys to come out. Just come to practice for a couple days, see if you like it."
The brick-by-brick mantra is starting to stack up for the Cavaliers. The program hopes that when everything is put into place that a winning program will be standing tall.
"Make sure we have our hearts in the right place, putting the last game behind us and focusing on the new," Allen said of his hopes for the season.
"Nobody's an easy out," the head coach said. "That's what I try to preach to our kids is we're done being the doormat of the Beach District and we plan to come out and really get after people."
Turner's era will officially kick off at home when Princess Anne hosts Bayside on August 28.
