From the first moment I met Dan Fife, I was in awe of him.
His unmatched reputation as the premier ambassador of the game of basketball in the state of Michigan preceded him anywhere he went. He was Clarkston and northern Oakland County’s undisputed favorite son, one of the state’s all-time athletic and coaching greats, but he never acted above it all.
He was always grounded and approachable, a credit to his high-character and desire to spread the gospel of disciplined, fundamentally-sound basketball while teaching life through the game he loved.
It was June 1990 and I was an eager-beaver 13-year old hoopster attending a youth camp in Rochester where he was a featured speaker.He was mild-mannered and measured in how he spoke, but firm and definitive in his message. As I learned that summer morning, Fife took command of any basketball gym he ever walked into, whether as a rugged and relentlessly-efficient player or as a Hall of Fame coach, master motivator and brilliant tactician.
After teaching a group of us at a shooting-drill station he designed for the campers, he went around the huddle in my designated group and asked all of us our name, shook all of our hands and wished us the best of luck going into our last season of middle school ball. When it was my turn, he put out his hand, gripped mine and looked me straight in the eyes. He showed a genuine interest in each and every one of us, even if it was simply for 10 seconds.
Those 10 seconds meant the world to a 13-year old boy like me who already knew the Fife family mythology from a distance but finally got to experience it in person, face-to-face. The encounter, one coach Fife surely had literally thousands of times in his four-decade coaching career, made a lasting impression on me, helped inspire my love of the game and foreshadowed future encounters, an adult friendship and working relationship formed with one of the most remarkable, truly authentic and sincere men I’ve ever had the honor of knowing or writing about.
Fife died last week following a multi-year battle with early-onset dementia. The legacy he leaves behind is monumental. And it goes considerably further than the numbers, which in itself are simply breathtaking: 703 victories, two state titles, 13 regional crowns, almost three dozen league and district championships apiece and countless lives forever touched and positively affected by his coaching, engagement and mentorship. (Oh, and he was a four-year starter on the University of Michigan’s basketball and baseball teams, drafted into the NBA by the Milwaukee Bucks and pitched in MLB for the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins franchises).
As they mourned the loss, Fife’s former players shared memories and stories celebrating his life and their relationships with him and what he means to them as adults today.
“From the time I was little playing in the McGrath league (Fife’s signature youth-basketball program that ran Saturday mornings), Coach Fife always remembered my name. … It made me want to play for him in high school and be a part of the tradition I grew up watching,” said Nick Tatu, a class of 2021 grad and one of Fife’s best outside shooters of all time. “I wouldn’t be the man I am today without his guidance and I will always cherish those moments I had with him and every single life lesson he imparted on me.”
Maybe Fife’s most accomplished Clarkston alum, 2018 Mr. Basketball Foster Loyer (Davidson-Michigan State) wanted to say thanks more than anything to the man he captained back-to-back Division 1 state championship teams for, finally getting Fife his long-coveted, well-deserved state-title rings to cap his historic career on the bench.
“Thank you, coach, for teaching me what it meant to be selfless, every day you mopped the floor before practice, no task was ever too small, no moment ever too big, you changed my life and so many others, rest easy, Coach, you’ll always be remembered.”
I reconnected with coach Fife when I was in college at Indiana University with his son Dane, who was his first Mr. Basketball-winner and McDonald’s All-American before Loyer. I often sat with coach Fife and his family at IU home games watching Dane and the Hoosiers play and he was equally magnanimous and kind to me as a 20-year old college student as he was when I met him as a youngster. Upon me re-introducing myself to him, he shook my hand and looked me straight in the eye with the same sincerity and genuine interest that he had showed me seven years earlier in my adolescence, always asking me about my studies and how my family was doing back in Detroit.
Once I graduated from college, I figured my time with coach Fife was over. But almost a decade later, I reconnected with him again, this time as a reporter covering him and his team for The Oakland Press, the paper of record for all things Fife since he burst on the scene as a three-sport phenom at Clarkson High Schools in the early 1960s. Now, It was the late 2000s and Fife was still trying to break his “quarterfinal curse.” as I re-appeared on the scene.
When I reintroduced myself to him in 2007, to my pleasant surprise, he recognized me and greeted me with a wide smile and that same handshake and direct eye contact. Over the next 10 years, we went on to build a working relationship of reporter-and-subject that I appreciated and enjoyed immensely on a personal level and benefited immensely from a professional level, too. I chronicled him finally breaking through in his quarterfinal quandary in 2009 and then was by his and his program’s side when they got to the promised land in 2017 and captured their first state crown. They did it again the next year and coach Fife called it quits months later, walking off into the sunset at the pinnacle, a luxury few of the true greats ever get.
I wrote the majority of the coverage of those magical championships runs for our paper, including penning his retirement story and a farewell column. Sitting down to write this column, an obituary of sorts, telling people about the humanity beyond the accolades and legendary imprint made on the court itself, was one of the hardest thing’s I’ve ever had to do as a journalist. Emotions flowed, fond memories and anecdotes flooded my brain, sadness filled my heart.
I was awestruck all over again, like when I first encountered him so long ago in my adolescence. I thought back to that final tournament run in March 2018. Following the repeat state title but before he announced his retirement, I gave him a photo I found in The Oakland Press archives of him and his future wife, Jan, as teenagers on his college visit to the University of Michigan, snapped by a staff photographer accompanying him on the trip to Ann Arbor back in 1967, as a token of appreciation. His eyes lit up the second I put the image in his hands.
“Scott, this means the world to me, I can’t thank you enough,” he said, shaking my hand, looking me right in the eye to express his gratitude.
I felt like I was 13 years old all over again.
Today, I want to thank him, one more time, for all he did. For me. For Clarkston, For Oakland County. For the entire stare of Michigan and the game of basketball everywhere. For all the players, parents, family, friends, and reporters.
We’re all in awe. And with heavy hearts, we say goodbye, Coach.
Rest peacefully, knowing the incredible impact you made lives on and Clarkston will never be the same again without you there.
