Staff photo by C.B. Schmelter / Mark Wiedmer’s drawing of Wayne Turner is seen in the studio at the Times Free Press on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020 in Chattanooga, Tenn.On the surface there would seem to be little common ground between the 1997 Tyner and 1987 Kirkman football teams.
Both ended their season with a win but that’s pretty much where the comparison would seem to end. The Rams ended that one-loss 1997 season by claiming the Class 2A state championship game on the frigid artificial turf at Vanderbilt Stadium, while Kirkman’s lone win of the ’87 season came on a muddy makeshift field on the grounds of Taft Youth Center.
The common link between those two otherwise distinctly different teams is Wayne Turner, who was on the coaching staff for both and does not see them as being dissimilar at all.
That’s because for Turner – who was the defensive coordinator at Kirkman when the team snapped the nation’s longest losing streak at 51 straight games with that 12-8 win at Taft, and the head coach at Tyner when the Rams became Hamilton County’s first public-school to win a state title – the lasting image from both teams is not the won/loss records but the smiles on the players’ faces as they walked off those fields.
“The looks on those kids’ faces, just how happy they were and the sense of accomplishment and relief, it was pretty much the same for both teams to me,” Turner said. “I’m still awfully proud to be associated with both groups of kids for having a goal and working hard to reach it.”