TEMPE – Sun Devil pride runs deep at Arizona State. For some alumni, ASU is more than a place they earned a degree or competed in a uniform. It is the place that became home.
Across Sun Devil Athletics, former student-athletes and graduates have returned to the Maroon and Gold, drawing on their experiences to serve the next generation. Turner Washington and Kayla Branderhorst took different paths to ASU, but both describe the same pull to stay connected to a place that gave them so much.
Turner Washington won five NCAA individual national championships as a Sun Devil.
Turner Washington
Assistant Coach, Track and Field
BS in conservation biology, 2020; Master’s in sports law and business, 2023
By the time his collegiate career ended, Turner Washington had become one of the most decorated student-athletes in school history, winning five NCAA individual national championships and helping Sun Devil Track and Field to a fifth-place team finish during his final season.
But Washington’s connection to ASU goes beyond medals. It is where he earned two degrees, made some of the most important relationships of his life and met his wife, Kira, who was also a member of the track and field team.
Now an assistant coach under head coach Ryan Vanhoy, Washington is helping lead the same throws program that helped shape him. He understands the tradition he is part of whenever he sees the record board in the track room.
“You walk into the track room, you see this record board, and you’re like, ‘Oh my God,’” Washington said. “To be in the top 10, you have to be throwing what at other schools' actual school records are.”
Washington did not always know coaching would be his path. After earning his master’s degree in sports law and business, he imagined a future in administration. But when ASU needed help with its throws group, he stepped in as a volunteer and eventually joined the staff full-time.
Coaching has changed the way he sees the sport. As an athlete, he controlled his own performance. As a coach, he has learned to support athletes through their own journeys.
“It’s not up to me,” Washington said. “It’s their career. They’re going to do what they’re going to do. All I can do is be here to support.”
For Washington, that support means helping athletes enjoy the process and create their own memories at ASU.
“It’s the desire to give back and help provide and create that experience for someone else,” Washington said, “where they can come here, make some of the best friends of their life and enjoy the four years, five years that they have doing it.”
Kayla Branderhorst and her father, Russ Kort, attend the Sun Devil Football game vs. UCLA on November 23, 2013.
Kayla Branderhorst
Director of Athletics Compliance
Master’s in sports law and business, 2015
For Kayla Branderhorst, Arizona State football has always been a part of the family.
Her parents became season-ticket holders shortly before they were married and have held their seats for 40 years. Both sets of her grandparents were season-ticket holders, too. For Branderhorst, fall Saturdays in Section 27 were part of growing up.
Some of her earliest ASU memories, though, come far from campus. When her family lived in Payson, her father ran a bread route, and one of his stops was Camp Tontozona. He would make the camp delivery his final stop of the day so he could climb a hill and watch football practice.
Sometimes, Branderhorst went with him.
“That’s really where my affinity came from,” Branderhorst said. “It started my bond with my dad around Arizona State Football.”
She still has an autograph book from those childhood trips, filled with signatures from former Sun Devils. She also remembers the emotions of the 1996 season, including ASU’s win over Nebraska and the heartbreak of watching Ohio State’s final drive in the 1997 Rose Bowl.
Her path back to ASU was not direct. Branderhorst attended Northern Arizona University for undergrad, though she still drove home for Sun Devil games whenever she could. Her first college game as an NAU cheerleader was against ASU in Tempe, where her parents sat in their usual seats wearing Maroon and Gold.
“Every time ASU scored, I’d jump a little bit, get excited,” Branderhorst said. “My coach would be like, ‘You’re cheering for the wrong team.’”
After college, Branderhorst worked as a managing paralegal and considered law school before realizing she was more interested in regulation than practicing law. One night at her parents’ kitchen table, she saw an advertisement for ASU’s new sports law and business program.
It clicked.
She joined the inaugural class, earned her master’s degree in 2015 and found her future in NCAA compliance. After beginning her career at Middle Tennessee State, she returned to ASU in 2018 as a compliance coordinator. She has since been promoted twice and now works exclusively with football.
“As you can imagine, it was a dream come true,” Branderhorst said. “To be able to do this for a living and then do it for the sport that I’m so passionate about is pretty awesome.”
The job has changed the way she experiences the game. She sees the people and work behind the moments fans watch on Saturdays, but the fan in her is still there.
“My Game Day is the best day,” Branderhorst said. “I’m working, but I’d be there anyway.”
The 2024 football season brought those worlds together as Branderhorst traveled with the team during its Big 12 Championship run and College Football Playoff appearance. It reminded her of the magic she felt during the 1996 season, only now she had personal relationships with the players and coaches behind the run.
For Branderhorst, working at ASU is the latest chapter in a lifelong connection to the Sun Devils: a little girl riding along on a bread route, a family making the drive to Tempe, a student finding her career path and now a compliance director helping build the program she grew up loving.
“It took me a little while to figure out what I loved,” Branderhorst said. “But to know that I could come in and be a piece of the puzzle, even if it’s a very small piece, was something that was so exciting to me and so rewarding.”
The ASU family
Across sports and roles, that same pull keeps showing up. Alumni describe it as loyalty, tradition, family, opportunity or simply a feeling they cannot quite name.
Maybe it is something in the air.
Or maybe it is what happens when a place gives people enough that they spend the rest of their careers finding ways to give it back.
Learn more about ASU alumni working in Sun Devil Athletics:
- Labor Day List: ASU Alumni in Sun Devil Athletics (Sept. 1, 2025)
- Labor Day List: ASU Alumni in Sun Devil Athletics (Sept. 2, 2024)
- Labor Day List: Many ASU alumni working in Sun Devil Athletics (Sept. 3. 2023)
- Labor Day List: ASU Alumni in Sun Devil Athletics (Sept. 5, 2022)
- Labor Day List: Man ASU Alums Working in Sun Devil Athletics (Sept. 6, 2021)
- Labor Day List: ASU Alumni in Sun Devil Athletics (Sept. 6, 2020)