Today’s interviewee is East Laurens coach Bin Turner, whose team defeated Toombs County 10-7 as a 12-point underdog last week to clinch the Falcons’ first playoff berth and winning season since 2012. Turner was hired in 2018 following an 0-10 season. His teams have finished their regular seasons 1-9, 1-9, 3-6 and now 6-4. East Laurens, the No. 4 seed from Region 2-A, will play at Putnam County on Friday.
Bin Turner, East Laurens head coach
1. What did the win over Toombs County mean to your team? “By winning, it forced a three-way tie [for third place]. If we won, we knew we’d be No. 4. If they had won, they’d have been No. 3 and Vidalia No. 4. So it put us in. This year, we got our first region win in almost a decade. Sept. 27, 2013, was the last region win before this year. I looked it up. The last playoff appearance was 2012. I actually coached against East Laurens the last time they made the playoffs. That’s what started my interested in the place. For our team, our seniors have been with us when it was bad. I told them it was going to get better, to stick it out. It’s easy to quit, having to go through 1-9, 1-9, 3-6, but I told them y’all are going to be the class that gets it started. They were ready and locked in Friday night. We got our mojo back. It wasn’t that we played perfect. We had a lot of turnovers, but we caused a lot of turnovers and just played really, really hard.”
2. What has been the reaction of the community and school to making the playoffs? “This was a huge win for our community. You probably didn’t know this, but on the Thursday before, we had three of our students in a bad car wreck. One of the young ladies lost her life. It’s a tight-knit community. Everybody’s hurting. This gave us some glimmer of happiness in a dark couple of days. Now the community is wanting to show our kids how special it is to make the playoffs. It’s hard enough to win football games in the state of Georgia, even harder to make the playoffs. I don’t know how many congratulations I’ve received, but it’s not us. It’s the kids. They wanted it bad enough and went and got it. People are so excited for them they can’t stand it. We’re making a huge deal out of it. We’re going to get chartered buses to go to the football game Friday.”
3. Toombs beat East Laurens 62-0 last year, and that was your 46th consecutive region loss. How did you turn it around? “By the end of the season last year, we had some people out, and our spirits were broken. We thought we were going to snap our region losing streak earlier in the year, and it didn’t happen. That was the last game, and we just didn’t play. This season, these seniors have been through it all. They’ve seen the program get better each year. They wanted to be remembered for taking the next step. They were willing to sell out and make sure it happened.”
4. What did you and your staff do when you arrived, when your current seniors were freshmen, that made the biggest difference in getting you to where you are? “The biggest thing is getting the weight room going. We were very weak when I got here. Last year, we came in second in AA in the state weightlifting meet, so we’ve gotten a lot stronger. We don’t have a lot of large bodies. We have to get what we have stronger. Then there’s a lot of people here who love them and believe in them. We’re moving into a brand new facility next year – new school, fieldhouse, field, weight room, everything. We believe that will give them another boost. It’s been hard, but we’re going in the right direction.”
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