In June of 2024, graduate student distance runner Ethan Turner emailed head coach Brad Herbster in hopes of a tryout. In his own words, the tryout was the worst he had ever run.
Fast forward 10 months, and Turner has not only broken records but set himself up to qualify for postseason running in his lone Division I season.
While he was born in England, Turner and his family have lived in Boone since he was in high school. He was initially drawn to soccer rather than running but found his true passion midway through his high school years.
“I did soccer in the fall and track in the spring but I thought I’d have a better chance at being a varsity athlete running track,” Turner said. “My first time running was just a great atmosphere. Teammates were great to be around and I learned a lot of from them.”
Even though he’s lived in the High Country, attending App State as a graduate student has given Turner a different outlook on the area.
“I’ve been able to settle in pretty easily,” Turner said. “I’ve been enjoying my grad program which I’ll finish up this summer and it’s just a good place to live.”
After he graduated from Watauga High School, Turner went on to UNC-Chapel Hill for his bachelor’s degree in statistics, not necessarily for athletics. Both of his parents, Michael and Catherine Turner, are history instructors at App State, so education has always been Ethan Turner’s priority.
While not choosing to be an NCAA athlete in running, Ethan Turner ended up joining UNC’s running club and continued to find passion in running. The running club at UNC is similar to club sports at App State; they practice two to four times a week and compete against other schools’ clubs, but athletes are not associated with the NCAA.
“I was very pleased that he was able to find an outlet, find people that he wanted to run with and get himself up and motivated,” Catherine Turner said. “Being a part of a club team is not the same as being a part of the team here. You know, having a coach and someone who looks after you, he put a lot of it on himself.”
During Ethan Turner’s time in the running club at UNC, he met Josh Marson, his future roommate and president of the running club. Ethan Turner and Marson immediately hit it off and became great friends during their time together.
“He’s super goofy. Like, within the first two weeks of meeting him, he had a nickname for everyone on the team,” Marson said. “He would go on Strava and make posts about us and I just found it super funny. My nickname was Life Coach Josh, which I guess was because I was giving a lot of life coach advice at the time, but it was cool seeing what story you’d appear in in the next Strava post.”
Strava is a running and cycling app that allows you to track your long-distance trips while also making posts like Instagram to connect with your friends.
Running in the club team at UNC allowed Ethan Turner to find a lot of success. He became a two-time National Intercollegiate Running Club Association All-American, 2024 NIRCA 5K Outdoor National Meet runner-up and played a part in the club’s NIRCA Southeast Regional Cross Country title in 2023.
“He’s one of those guys where you watch the way he runs and the way he trains and you think to yourself, ‘There’s got to be more for this guy,’” Marson said. “I have, in no means, any experience in coaching, no experience with knowing what a good runner looks like, but there’s something about Ethan that gives people the idea that he can do something special.”
The drive Marson saw in Ethan Turner caused him to push Turner to try out for a Division I program. Ethan Turner eventually reached out to the coach at App State via email to try and get a tryout and, a couple of weeks later, he was in Boone for a workout.
“The tryout was terrible. I was convinced that I had absolutely blown it. I came in emailing back and forth — just being annoying in a way — but I got the spot,” Ethan Turner said. “Before I even trained with the team, I ran the first cross country meet unattached. It was embarrassing and I thought I had no chance but I guess they saw something, and I’m here now.”
Ethan Turner has used the most of his lone year at App State, finishing No. 10 at the Sun Belt Championships in the fall and capping off that semester with a ninth-place finish at the Firetower Project Run 8k in Boone. Turner’s second semester kicked off to a phenomenal start as he placed first in both the Virginia Tech Invitational and the Myrtle Beach Collegiate Challenge in the 3000-meter races.
Turner’s 8:21.76 broke a school record in the 3000-meter by nearly seven seconds. The original time of 8:28.70 was marked back in 1998.
“He didn’t tell us he broke the record, we found out ourselves,” Michael Turner said. “He’s not a very self-promoting type of person. We are very proud but not very surprised because he works very, very hard at everything he does. Sometimes, I think he’s got a screw loose the way he gets laser focused.”
Ethan Turner has a long way to go before the end of the season and the end of his college career. Four races stand in between them and the Sun Belt Championships May 8-10, and then NCAA qualifiers May 28-30 and Championships June 11-14. Past the meets and races, Ethan Turner knows that every time he puts the Black and Gold on, he’s representing much more than himself.
“Knowing we’re representing the university and the area, I just have to be more than just me,” Ethan Turner said. “You know just me coming in and joining the team by just emailing the coach, as a massive long shot. Being given a spot, then being given the opportunity to progress and a spot on a team and meeting some really great people, it’s a source of pride.”
