Saxony Lutheran has its man.
OJ Turner was introduced as the first football coach in the history of Saxony Lutheran during a news conference on Feb. 21.
“This is super exciting,” Turner said of being introduced, “I know a lot of these kids with my daughter going to school here, so it feels like family before we even get started.”
Turner is no stranger to football in the area as he was star defensive player for Cape Central High School before parlaying that success into a career as a linebacker at Southeast Missouri State University in the early 2000s. He went on to play professionally in St. Louis in the Arena Football League.
This will be Turner’s first coaching job at the high school level, but not his only coaching experience. Turner has been involved as a coach for various youth sports programs in the Cape Girardeau area. He developed the Junior Tigers for four years and has learned the system used by Cape Central head coach Kent Gibbs.
Now that he has his own program, Turner has some ideas on how to build the Saxony Lutheran program from the ground up.
“The first thing would be to get a coaching staff together,” Turner said. “We are working on some plans to really upgrade the weight room, where it will accommodate 40 or 50 kids. It will help not only the football players, but all the other sports that play here. It’s amazing how well the teams have done here without any real strength training.”
After that, Turner will look to build a culture for the program.
“You look at Coach Gibbs at Cape Central, Coach [Ryan] Nesbitt at Jackson and even Coach [Tom] Matukewicz at SEMO, they have all done a great job of creating a culture within their program and we want to be able to do the same thing,” Turner said.
Turner also mentioned the importance of creating some sort of a feeder program to help build the Saxony Lutheran program at a younger age.
However, until that is established, he will have to rely on the interest in the current high school kids coming to the program now that football is an option. Now that his appointment is official, Turner has began reaching out to students on their interest in joining the football program. He currently has about 20 kids who say they are interested, with the hopes of building that number to as many as 40 by next fall.
Saxony Lutheran will start with a junior varsity in the fall of 2024, with a varsity squad beginning in 2025.
Turner made sure to temper his expectations for the upcoming seasons as the team and program gets off the ground, especially when comparing it to annual powers like Jackson and Cape Central.
“You’re walking among monsters here,” Turner said. “We need to make sure that we have reasonable goals. I’m not a loser and I wouldn’t have taken this on if I didn’t feel like we couldn’t have success here. The main goal is create good husbands and fathers and football is a byproduct of that.”
