At Nardin Academy, Katie Turner toted a megaphone almost everywhere she went. She even called it “Meg.”
She stood on the sidelines of field hockey games and at the finish line of cross-country meets, cheering for her classmates. Sometimes, she’d walk through Elmwood Village with her friends and use the megaphone to talk to people on the other side of a residential street.
That was Turner’s way of engaging the people around her, bringing them into the fold to become part of something bigger. She was always outgoing, and now she is the recruiting coordinator at Georgia, one of the nation’s highest-profile football programs. She is in charge of helping the Bulldogs bring in some of the nation’s best high school players.
“In my position, I’m seeing so many women starting to pop up in those same positions,” said Turner, who is Georgia’s primary liaison between its coaches and its recruits when they arrive on campus in Athens, Ga. “When I started as a student worker at Alabama eight years ago, I don’t even know how many positions such as director of recruiting operations, that were females. The recruiting coordinator used to be a position coach, and some schools don’t have the budget to have that designated role.
“But in the last 10 years, it’s really opened up, especially for women, and that’s really exciting.”
From Buffalo to the SEC
An Orchard Park native, Turner was president of the pep squad at Nardin. She was known at the all-girls school as someone who thrived on making connections.
“If Katie had one connection, she was going to fill in all the rest,” said Clare Costello, a classmate of Turner’s at Nardin. “She was captain of the rowing team her senior year and she knew one of the freshmen on the novice team, and then, not too long later, the entire novice team knew her and they were just thrilled that Katie was talking to her. Katie is a person who has no hesitation in starting a conversation with someone.
“The personality was there. She was always the one who was ready to talk, who was constantly energetic and smiling, and she wanted people to be happy.”
But she attended Alabama with the intention of working with the football program. Liz Alexander, Turner’s best friend from Nardin, remembers the shock she felt when Turner chose Alabama in the spring of 2012, sight unseen.
“She wanted to go far from home,” Alexander said. “She wanted to mix that up. I thought she was kind of crazy at first. I thought, 'Katie, how are you going to fit in? You’re a loud Northerner on a campus of Southern belles!' But she became president of her sorority, she found her niche in the football program in a position that’s really sought-after and is not easy to do.”
At the end of her first semester, though, she returned to Western New York for Christmas, homesick and worried that she would not find a place to fit in when she went back to Tuscaloosa.
“You need to get a little more involved,” her parents urged.
In January of 2013, she applied for on-campus jobs, and one with the university’s student recruitment team, an arm of the admissions office that worked with the football program, caught her eye. It put her in the thick of football operations as a host for recruits on game days or to help with tours of the football facilities on recruiting visits.
She also learned that college football recruiting is its own endeavor.
“There’s some fans out there, they get just as excited about recruiting and landing a top recruit as they do winning a game,” said Turner, who graduated from Alabama with a degree in human environmental sciences in 2016. “Or when the recruiting rankings come out.
“It’s become its own beast. It’s almost like an arms race. Every year, we’re trying to outdo each other and we’re all trying to come up with the next, best thing, the biggest and best facility. It’s interesting to see how much it has spiraled, and I’ve really been able to witness the evolution of recruiting.”
As she found her niche, Turner kept a positive attitude and a good work ethic. She was willing to embrace different kinds of tasks and assignments, and network, even though she didn’t have a megaphone at Alabama. Instead, she created her own virtual bullhorn.
“I learned that you can create value in what you do, no matter what position you are in,” Turner said. “I always think, how can I make an impact?”
Building relationships
Billy Napier, who was a wide receivers coach and an offensive analyst on Nick Saban’s staff at Alabama for six seasons, noticed Turner’s work habits. When Napier became head coach at Louisiana in December of 2017, he hired Turner as the Ragin’ Cajuns’ director of on-campus recruiting. She had just completed a two-year internship with the Bills and Pegula Sports & Entertainment in community relations and business development.
With the Ragin’ Cajuns, Turner also was in charge of a number of football events during the year.
“That is such an imperative role in your organization,” Napier said. “Someone like Katie makes for a better product and better presentation. Her experience at Alabama as a student in the football program was extremely beneficial. She was an all-star as a student worker, and that’s why we offered her the job here. That position was open when I got here as the head coach, and she took it. From day one, she ran with it. She took great ownership, she was creative, she was aggressive in her approach and she formed great relationships with the people on staff, on campus and in the community.”
Going from working in one of college football’s top programs to working with a mid-major program required Turner to be resourceful. Louisiana, which plays in the Sun Belt Conference, doesn’t have the money or the prestige of a blue-blood program such as Alabama or Georgia. Its immediate recruiting footprint also fell in the same area as LSU.
“For me, in my role, I had the Alabama standards, and Coach Napier had that, too," Turner said. “How do we accomplish that same standard but with less resources? We did it, and it was fantastic. And the administration helped us with what we needed.”
Napier, however, knew Louisiana wouldn’t be Turner's last stop.
“She’s had multiple job opportunities, and she chose to stay at Louisiana through those,” Napier said. “This was a place where she had prior relationships with people, but she was ready for the next challenge. I think it was hard on her, but for me, I could see where there was a logical next step for her. Georgia is a great place that has tremendous tradition in a competitive league.”
An unexpected challenge
Three months into her job at Georgia, Turner is learning to navigate the world of recruiting during the Covid-19 pandemic. The spring is typically a pivotal period of engagement. But on March 16, the university announced that it had moved to online learning. Three days earlier, the NCAA instituted a mandated recruiting dead period, creating an unexpected challenge for her and the Georgia football program.
Turner coordinates much of the recruiting communication, but right now, phone calls, text messages and video platforms are the only means of reaching recruits.
“It’s disrupted what we do, that’s for sure," said Turner, who oversees three recruiting coordinators at Georgia. "Right now is prime time for getting kids on campus. That is killing us. This period of time, you have spring football practice and recruits can come to practice and sit in on position meetings, and it’s a perfect time to get to know them. It’s a little more laid-back because it’s spring practice.
“It’s unfortunate these visits have been taken away, because I don’t know if we’re going to get this time back. This is the time of year where you build relationships and maintain those relationships, all the way to signing day.”
At Georgia, she doesn’t have a megaphone, but she now has a network. It doesn’t just include football coaches and personnel. She’s part of a group of more than 50 women who work in college football recruiting who communicate through text messages and video conferences. In 2019, she was accepted into the NFL’s Women's Careers in Football Forum.
Costello believes that Turner’s ability to quickly form relationships with people, and to build an immediate trust and confidence with someone, is valuable in her work in recruiting.
“Recruiting is a stressful process, one where you never really know what is going on,” Costello said. “You need that kind of presence.”
If someone had told Alexander 10 years ago that Turner was going to work with a major college football program, she would have believed them.
“It’s amazing what she’s doing, but it’s not shocking, in any way,” Alexander said. “Katie has always worked so hard, and she’s super-personable and very dynamic. I don’t think people would meet Katie and not forget her.
“People knew her, they knew her work ethic and they know that she puts her whole heart into everything she does, and she’s made so many connections. Even after she started working at Louisiana, people were still reaching out to her at other schools, but this was the best opportunity for her at the right time. And I think this is the beginning of more great things for her.”
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