Volunteer basketball coach helps kids in need on and off the court

Several weeks ago, adviser Marc Turner traveled to Ohio to be a groomsman in a wedding, which may seem unremarkable except that it’s the third wedding he’s participated in for graduates of a school where he is a basketball coach.

Mr. Turner, president and owner of Renaissance Advisory Group in Chester Springs, Pa., was honored for his longtime commitment to The School at Church Farm in Paoli, Pa. At the Community Leadership Awards, he received the Mentoring Excellence Award.

“For a lot of these guys, Marc is the [only] man who has given them a sense of what it means to have a commitment to a wife, kids, work and to other people in the world,” explained Bill Seymour, the school’s executive director of development.

For the last 16 years, except for a few years during which he was an assistant basketball coach at Villanova (Pa.) University, Mr. Turner, 43, has served as Church Farm’s basketball coach. But colleagues and friends say his influence reaches far beyond the court.

Church Farm is a boarding and day school that offers a college preparatory education to boys in Grades 7 through 12 from financially and emotionally disadvantaged backgrounds. Most of the 180 students come from single-parent households. While the kids’ families contribute to varying degrees toward tuition, Church Farm provides roughly $10 million in scholarships yearly.

It’s a scholarship that Mr. Turner supports in several ways. Every year, he requests that his part-time coaching salary go toward scholarship coffers. Mr. Turner also has secured donations from the community: If a student says he might not return to the school due to financial constraints, Mr. Turner finds a contributor to keep him at the school. Then Mr. Turner makes sure that the student and benefactor meet.

“I’ve found that the individual giving the money has gained so much more than the student who gets the check,” he said.

Mr. Turner also helps teach students the importance of giving back to the community. For instance, after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, he mobilized 50 students to help the Exton (Pa.) Region Chamber of Commerce collect household items and pack five tractor trailers with the goods, which were shipped to Pass Christian, Miss., for hurricane victims.

Among those working on the relief project through the chamber was Melinda Williams, managing partner of The Williams Group, an advertising and marketing firm in Exton. Working closely with Mr. Turner during the several months it took to organize the massive relief effort, she saw firsthand the traits that positively influence Church Farm students. He single-handedly emptied storage sheds of donated goods, removed furniture from homes whose owners needed help, and oversaw the students as they unloaded items from cars and loaded goods onto the trucks.

“When you go through a situation like that with people, you see what they’re really made of,” Ms. Williams said. “If he was willing to do all he did without pay or [recognition], you can only imagine how good he is on a business level, when he’s getting paid.”

Mr. Turner’s quiet leadership also has attracted the attention of Edward Snider, owner of the Philadelphia 76ers.

Several years ago, after Mr. Turner’s team played against a local rival, Mr. Snider, whose grandson was on the opposing team, approached Mr. Turner to express his admiration for his coaching and his players’ poise. The upshot was an invitation for Mr. Turner’s team to attend a Sixers game, participate in a pre-game court warm-up and meet the players. This upcoming National Basketball Association season will mark the team’s fourth annual visit to a Sixers game.

“It would be one thing if Marc were a graduate or a parent of a student, or had some other linear connection to [the school] to make it easy to explain why he goes so far beyond his formal obligations, but he doesn’t,” Mr. Seymour said.

Most recently, Mr. Turner’s mentoring has come full circle.

His daughter, Alexis, is a freshman at Temple University in Phil-adelphia. One of Mr. Turner’s former players, Michael, is in his second year there.

Michael has stepped into the role of big brother to Alexis, offering to check in on her and help her as needed. When she and Mr. Turner moved her belongings into her dorm, Michael helped.

“I guess it makes me know I did something right,” Mr. Turner said.