This past fall, Oak Hall School’s Edwin McTureous closed out his 27-year cross country coaching career with a state runner-up finish in girls cross country.

It was the seventh state runner-up finish during his tenure (2003, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2018 and 2025).

“The key to the girls finishing second was the work they put in long before the season even started,” McTureous said after the Lady Eagles tied for the state championship but lost on a tiebreaker. “From June 1st on, they committed themselves to improving every day. After last year’s disappointment, they came back hungry, disciplined, and focused. Their consistency and collective belief in each other made all the difference.”

The OHS girls won the Class 1A state title five times (2012, 2016, 2019, 2020 and 2022).

His boys teams were Class 1A state runners-up three consecutive years from 2018 to 2020. They competed in their 13th straight state championship and came away with an impressive fourth-place team finish in November.

“The boys’ fourth-place finish came from the same formula they’ve relied on all year—consistent training, accountability to each other, and showing up ready to compete every week,” McTureous said. “They were determined to improve on last season, and the growth from top to bottom in the lineup made this result possible.”

He has been named one of eight finalists for the National High School Athletic Coaches Association (NHSACA) National Coach of the Year in Girls Cross Country.

“I’m just blessed to be honest with you, blessed to have been at a place for a long time with a lot of supportive parents and a lot of dedicated kids, supportive wife,” McTureous said. “Just kind of humbling, not doing it for awards, but I guess it was nice to be recognized for the years that we’ve had success…I was lucky enough to be selected as one of the eight finalists in the country to represent for girls cross country.”

The finalists will be honored during the National COY Awards Banquet held during the national convention on July 1, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Conference Center in Coralville, Iowa, and the COY recipient will be announced. The NHSACA, the nation’s oldest coaches’ association, has been recognizing elite coaching talent since 1978.

McTureous has previously been recognized as the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) State Coach of the Year (2016), a three-time Florida Dairy Farmers Class 1A Coach of the Year, and a 15-time Gainesville Sun Coach of the Year.

His selection was determined by a rigorous evaluation of his service to high school athletics, championship legacy, and coaching record, which includes an incredible 3,216 career wins.

Under his leadership, the team has qualified for the state finals for 25 consecutive years.

“Qualifying the team for the state finals for 25 consecutive years is a testament to the dedication, grit, and spirit of the young women who committed themselves to this program,” McTureous said.

His other team accomplishments include 14 regional championships, with a dominant run of titles between 2010 and 2016 and 2020 and 2023, and 18 District Championships: (2002, 2003, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2025).

Not bad for a basketball coach.

“I wasn’t a cross country or track coach when I started there, I was a basketball coach,” said McTureous, who is also the school’s Athletics Director. “I didn’t know anything about it. I was originally hired 31 years ago there to coach basketball, and I would still say to this day, I probably know more about basketball than I do track and field and cross country.”

The P.K. Yonge grad, who ran one year of cross country with the Blue Wave as a freshman, was asked by then OHS AD Jeff Malloy about coaching track and field right after basketball season had just ended.

“The head coach at that time stepped away like a week before the season and Jeff came to me and said, ‘Hey, can you go out and help the track and field team?’ I said, Jeff, I know nothing about track and field,” said McTureous, who began his coaching career at PKY under Randall Leath and was a part of the 1991 state championship team.

He agreed to “help maybe for a year.”

“I knew the kids, so I could just be a function of stability a little bit,” McTureous said. “Well, after the first year, he said, ‘Hey, do you want to do it again?’ I said, Yeah, I’ll help again. Well, after the second year, I started getting the bug a little bit, so I was doing girls basketball, I was doing track and field, and I said, well, if I’m going to build a successful track and field program, I need to coach cross country too.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

McTureous, who was with the girls basketball program for 10 years under head coach Eric Ringdahl and was the boys varsity basketball coach for nine years, said he “learned a lot” during his 27-year cross country career.

“I listened to a lot of smart people, a lot of smart coaches, college coaches, other high school coaches, but I think it was just the buy-in of kids, just trust the process,” he said. “We didn’t have a lot of large teams, 40-50 kids out, but the small groups that I had just worked really hard, and I think that’s what it took to have some of that success.”

Former basketball coach Monte Towe won the school’s second district title during the 2023-24 season, but McTureous led boys basketball to its first district championship in program history during the 2010-11 season.

“We won down in Ocala versus Seven Rivers, we won at the buzzer,” McTureous said. “I was also fortunate to be a part of the girls program that went to the final four, assisting with Coach Ringdahl, so yeah, I’ve done a little bit all there, and then I somehow ended up with cross country and track kind of being the end of my coaching career.”

The championships were great, but he also cherished the process.

“I think sometimes the greatest memories is having some of those kids that came out that couldn’t run a lap around the track, but by the end of it they could run a 5K and some of those kids that when they were younger that were in that state, by the time they were senior, they made the varsity team,” he said.

McTureous, who will coach track and field this year, said he plans to retire from coaching after this season, but he also kind of left the door open.

“I’ll still be the AD and help continue to build all the athletic programs up, and I’m looking forward to that, and maybe someday when I’m able to retire from a full-time job, I’ll maybe get back into coaching again,” he said. “It’s possible, but I’ve got two grandkids that live up in Virginia, and when I have some free weekends, I like to get to see them a little bit more. They’re growing fast, have a little bit more downtime, but as everyone knows, even AD’s worlds are still pretty busy.”