Winthrop soccer manager a steady presence for Eagles

By Karl Lyles - klyles@heraldonline.com

For four seasons, Patrick Turney has served as the Winthrop men's soccer team's manager. He does all the thankless jobs that need doing. He's good at it and he's as much a part of the team as any player.

No stranger to the sport, Turney played three years of varsity soccer in high school in Versailles, Ky. He was a captain his senior year when his team won a state title. His sister, Kelly, played a year of soccer at Winthrop. She was a goalkeeper. Turney came to visit his sister and liked the school.

Winthrop soccer coach Rich Posipanko said Turney is a good player who could have played Division II soccer. Instead, he chose Winthrop and put soccer aside. By chance, former Winthrop soccer player Doug Killebrew told Turney the team needed a manager in the fall of 2006.

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Turney's first thought was “I don't want to be a water boy.” That thought was later replaced by intrigue, and the freshman talked to Winthrop associate head coach Daniel Ridenhour about the job. Ridenhour and Posipanko decided to give him a shot.

Turney traveled with the team to the conference tournament in 2006 and to their College Cup match at Old Dominion. Since then he has made all the trips — making sure all the gear is on the bus, distributing meal money to the players. This year he has taken on some of the hotel check-in chores. It can be a daunting task getting 30-40 people off the bus and into their rooms.

“Each trip, it's a little more responsibility,” Turney said.

Now a senior, he will graduate in May with a degree in business administration with a concentration on management. His family owns a horse farm in Kentucky. He gave some thought to majoring in animal science but after a talk with his father decided business would give him a good background if he chose to go home to work on the ranch.

“In 31 years of coaching, I have never had a student assistant as efficient and organized as Turney,” Posipanko said.

To get that kind of compliment out of the coach is saying something. Posipanko can lean toward being a perfectionist when it comes to his soccer program. It is a characteristic that has him listed on to the top-10 list of active DI coaches with 333 wins.

Turney takes his duties seriously but still has a lot of fun. He said recently he had never forgotten anything for a road game until last Sunday.

When the team bus rolled to a stop at Gardner-Webb's soccer field for Winthrop's Big South tournament match with Liberty, Turney discovered he had left the warmup tops and practice cones back in Rock Hill.

“To be honest, I was terrified,” Turney said, thinking of how Posipanko might react. The scrappy manager went to Gardner-Webb's soccer coach, Tony Setzer, for help. In no time, Turney had warmups and cones on the field.

Setzer told Turney he would never hear the end of the transaction from Posipanko.

True enough. Turney has taken some good-natured ribbing for the mistake.

Posipanko and Ridenhour have given Turney the unofficial title director of soccer operations for all the work he does.

“He's the best we've had,” Posipanko said. “We usually don't have someone stay around four years. Now, he sort of runs the guys around.”

It had been a running joke between Turney and Posipanko the last two years that he would get to play on Senior Night, Nov. 3. Winthrop was playing Coastal Carolina and fighting for a good seeding in the BSC tournament. Turney figured his only chance to actually play was if Winthrop had clinched the regular-season title.

“We told Turney he might play,” Ridenhour said. But the plans had already been made. That night the PA announcer called out the starting lineups and Turney heard his name as the starting forward.

Ridenhour threw him a jersey — No. 25. Turney was dumbfounded.

“I never thought they actually would. It was just an ongoing joke,” Turney recalled. “Playing Division I soccer is like a dream come true. I am around these guys every day, but to be on the field playing was great.”

Since that game, Turney has been back to the day-to-day stuff that makes the team go — getting equipment out for training sessions, putting it away afterward, loading the bus for three tournament games at Gardner-Webb last weekend, preparing for Thursday's trip to face Duke in the NCAA tournament.

It's all worth it. He got his 10 minutes of fame and has earned his three conference championship rings.