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Prep Notebook Turner's Cowboys are headed to Medford By GREG STILES It's been a season of discovery for first-year Crook County High football coach Steve Turner. After 10 years of coordinating the North Medford defense for Rod Rumrey, Turner now has a program to call his own. The successes and failures are now credited to his account. Crook County High is in Prineville, where the High Desert tumbles into a valley carved out by the Crooked River on the west. The Ochoco National Forest sprouts to the east. It takes roughly five hours to cover the 247 miles from Medford to Prineville. Turner estimates he drove 10,000 miles shuttling possessions from Medford to Central Oregon last summer. "And that didn't count my wife's trips," he says. Actually, Turner moved twice, finally settling into a four-acre mini ranch northwest of town near Grizzly Mountain. All those hours moving were just a tune-up for what was ahead. The nearest Intermountain Conference rival is a half-hour's drive to Redmond. Then there are the drives to Hermiston, Pendleton and La Grande blotting out the better part of a day. The five-and six-hour jaunts are just part of life east of the Cascades, where Class 4A schools are few and far between. A jamboree appearance meant a four-hour trip to Salem and the season-opener was an even longer trip to McMinnville. "Getting home from a game at five in the morning is tough," he admits. Turner says the Cowboys have been willing pupils. In the classroom the team is carrying a 3.28 grade-point average. On the field, the challenge has been greater. "We're still developing discipline and they developed a lot of bad habits in the past," Turner says. "That came back to haunt us when we lost our composure in the second quarter last week." The Cowboys haven't won an Intermountain Conference title or beaten Bend since the pinnacle year of 1984 when Crook County won the state championship. Bend beat the Cowboys 21-6 last Friday, handing them their second loss in seven games. Turner has had to get used to reporters and cameras following him around. Two of the Cowboys' games have been taped for replay on local cable. "It can be overwhelming," Turner says. I've never had to deal with the press. It's different, getting pulled out of practice to talk to people on TV." Homecoming is a full-fledged festival in Prineville. A two-plus hour assembly attended by young and old alike is followed by an hourlong parade with kids loading onto log trucks and semis. "The skateboarders and cowboys all get into it, because it's tradition around here," Turner says. "(Former South Medford wrestling coach) Pete Lucas told me `You won't believe what goes on.' He was right." Turner has a homecoming of his own Friday night when the Cowboys ride into Medford's Spiegelberg Stadium. Turner knows Tornado players as well as his own. He installed North's offense to go with his defense at Crook County. The biggest difference is that Turner will be standing on the other sideline. "There's going to be no mysteries about what we're going to do," Turner admits. "Ask (North secondary coach) Chris Parnell what we're going to do. He knows my defense as well as my defensive coordinator." The Tornado won last year's meeting, 43-28, in Prineville, and many of the players on both sides return. The schools exchanged film, but Turner says he returned the North-Grants Pass video without viewing it. "We met Sunday night and we didn't even talk about North Medford," Turner says. "We're in a situation where we need to become a better football team. We've concentrated so much on the other teams that our fundamentals fell off. We've got to get back to basics." There are 75 players in the program, including 12 seniors. But it's the 37 freshmen out that give Turner reason to think it won't be another 14 years before Crook County finishes first in its conference. "We've got good lines of communication down into the middle school," Turner says. "I think we've got a good situation for the long run." ON THE COVER -- One of the perks of being named national coach of the year is getting your picture on the cover of the Oregon Coaches Directory. North Medford softball coach Larry Binney, who was national softball coach of the year, is on the front of the 1998-99 directory that was mailed out this month. Binney's Black Tornado won its third state title last spring. His teams are 395-89-1 in 17 years and have won 13 Southern Oregon Conference crowns. Along the way, 19 players have gained first-team all-state honors. (Greg Stiles is a Mail Tribune sports writer. He can be reached at 776-4483.) Today's Sports Index Mail Tribune Copyright� The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford,