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In a sea of celebration, Rashard Turner clutched his home white basketball jersey and stretched out the navy MAINE stitched across the front to anyone who would look at it. Teammate Ernest Turner’s last-second half-court shot had just catapulted the Black Bears to a 69-66 win over arch rival New Hampshire, ensuring the Bears wouldn’t finish at the bottom of the America East standings and propelling them into the conference tournament having finally found each other.
Lingering just outside the three-point arc, Rashard Turner raised his fists to his mouth, leaned back and looked to the heavens beyond the roof of Alfond Arena in a silent moment of thanks and then joined the swarm of hooting and hollering Black Bears congratulating each other.
“When the going gets tough, we stick together,” Turner said. “We don’t really pay attention to our record because that doesn’t define a person’s heart or who’s going to fight the longest.”
Turner’s first season in Orono has been one of the most trying of his basketball career. His Peekskill High School teams went 79-18. He played a year at Kent State after their Elite Eight appearance in the NCAA Division I Basketball tournament. He led Munroe Junior College to the Region XV National Junior College Athletic Association Championship. Working hard to keep his team over the .500 mark isn’t something he’s used to.
“It’s been tough,” he said. “In high school and ju-co, you win 20 games, and now you barely win 10. It’s a big shock. You go home at night wondering if you can do more.”
But the hard times haven’t discouraged Turner and the Black Bears. Adversity has brought them together and pushed them to get that much more out of each other.
“If we were winning 20 games, I don’t know that I’d have the relationships I have with my teammates,” Turner said. “We’ve bonded. That’s where we’re starting to get it. We know we can fight with these teams, and we’re trusting each other.”
Team chemistry, team trust and Turner’s outstanding play have led the Black Bears to three straight wins and a 7-9 conference record despite a 0-4 start. The 5’10” New York native scored a career-best 25 points in the season finale Sunday and has been in double figures the last three games.
“Rashard works so hard,” UMaine head coach Ted Woodward said. “In the fall he was in here all the time working on his game. He’s been a leader for us on and off the court.”
As recruiting coordinator for former UMaine head coach Dr. John Giannini, Woodward himself worked hard to get Turner to attend UMaine in 2002, but Rashard opted to attend the higher profile Kent State in Ohio.
“Really, I was chasing the hype instead of going where the support would be,” Turner said. “I had friends telling me, ‘You’ve got to go to Maine. Coach is showing you the most love. You’ve got to go where the love is.’ But you want to go to the big school.”
After practicing with the Golden Flashes as a red shirt at the end of the 2003 season, Turner began to grow weary of Kent. Though he saw action in 11 games as a freshman, he also saw the strength in the team and the continued recruitment of guards. He decided it was time to move on.
“The year at Kent changed my life,” Turner said. “It gave me a competitive edge and showed me what it takes to survive at a division one program.”
Instead of transferring to another division one program and sitting out a year because of NCAA rules, Turner opted to spend a year back home in New York at Monroe Junior College in the Bronx.
“A friend of mine is an assistant coach there and we got talking, and I got to be home around my family,” Turner said. “I wanted to go to school and play, and I knew if I did well in school, I’d be able to go to a division one program. It was like coming out of high school all over again.”
Woodward, whose own fortunes had changed as he became head coach in Orono, saw a second opportunity to land the prized point guard.
“He was one of our top recruits. We always liked his game,” Woodward said. “We had a good relationship with the Peekskill family. They let us know what was going on, and we knew he was going to be someone we would follow and continue to recruit.”
Turner signed a Letter of Intent to play at UMaine last July, beginning his first season with the Black Bears in October. But the transition back to the college game wasn’t as smooth as Turner had hoped.
“I struggled early with reading the defense,” Turner said. “I would try to score when it called for me to pass. Now I’m learning to take what they give me. If they give me a shot, I shoot. If they let me drive or pass, I pass.”
Despite the growing pains, Turner adjusted. He took higher percentage shots. He dished out more assists to get his teammates involved. He made smarter reads.
“At high school you can dominate with your physical aspects,” Woodward said. “It’s harder in college. It’s more mental.”
“The style of basketball is different,” Turner said. “It’s a big adjustment. Before, you know any given night you’ll score 20. At college, you come off an eight-point game and you might get six. It’s not that the defenses are any better or worse. It’s just reading.”
With nearly a full season under his belt, Turner is making nearly 40 percent of his shots, he’s the team’s second leading scorer and on the floor, he’s an emotional leader.
Turner’s performance off the court warrants as much praise as his performance on the court. He was recently named an academic Rising Star for attaining a grade point average better than 3.0 in his first semester. Majoring in child development, he feels his outgoing personality will be great for working with children. And he’s mindful of and grateful for the way his grandmother raised him.
“I look at my grandmother and the things she sacrificed for me. Just money for sports when it was needed in other places, she would put it aside for me,” Turner said. “She just taught me for life never give up, just keep trying hard.”
But Turner’s success in his first season at UMaine hasn’t satisfied him.
“I’m not in my best shape,” he said. “To me, being in shape is playing 40 minutes baseline to baseline. I’ll condition myself this summer to never come off the floor.”
Woodward knows Turner will continue to grow. He knows he hopes to be a part of a championhip team in the conference tournament this season, and to have a better regular season next year.
“He’s a kid I think a whole lot of,” Woodward said. “He looked at this as a real opportunity to have a good career and an impact on the campus community.
“He’s the type of person everyone ultimately wants to see become a success, and he’s put his heart and mind into making that happen.”
