CLARKSTON, Mich. – Had he known what would have transpired in the years after, longtime Clarkston boys basketball coach Dan Fife would have responded to the email in a heartbeat, instead of ignoring it.
In 2011, when John Loyer took a job as assistant head coach for the Pistons under then head coach Lawrence Frank, Loyer’s wife, Katie, was researching schools in the Detroit area for her son Foster to attend.
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In sixth grade, Foster Loyer was already becoming a basketball prodigy, having been up close and personal for countless NBA games and practices when John was an NBA assistant coach, so finding a good basketball community and program was imperative.
So Katie Loyer heard about basketball-mad Clarkston and how Fife had become known as arguably the state’s top coach, and decided to send an introductory email to let him know about Foster and the rest of the family.
The response from Fife?
Absolutely nothing.
“I was a little taken aback when I never heard from him,” Katie Loyer said.
Fife said he has gotten a lot of emails over the years from players and families interested in coming to Clarkston, including one from Russia, but leaves them alone, in fear that people will think he is trying to illegally recruit.
The Loyers eventually did settle at Clarkston after going to open gyms at the school and meeting with Fife, whom John Loyer immediately gravitated towards.
“I thought it was a very disciplined program,” John Loyer said. “I thought guys really shared the ball and played defense the right way. Just how they were coached.”
Again, had Fife known then the impact Foster Loyer would have on his program and the Clarkston community, there would have been no hesitation to respond to Katie Loyer's email.
The championship dividends
Now a senior at Clarkston, Foster Loyer was recently named this year’s winner of the Mr. Basketball Award and he will go down as one of the great players to ever play high school basketball in the state of Michigan.
Despite being a diminutive 6 foot 1 inches tall and 160 pounds, Loyer his high school career with 2,323 points, 591 assists (10th all-time), seventh in 3-point field goals with 273 (5th all-time), and set a state record for most free throws made in a career with 632.
More importantly, he was the biggest reason why Fife last season got to celebrate something he had waited 60 years for.
Completing a 60-year quest
Clarkston won its first state championship last year with a 75-69 win over Grand Rapids Christian in the state final, thanks to 29 points from Loyer, and there were tears flowing around the state in happiness for Fife for completing quite a process toward a lifelong dream.
When he was 7 years old, Fife’s father, a coal miner, moved the family to Clarkston in search of a better life away from the mines. Dan Fife eventually became an athletic legend, starring in basketball and baseball before earning a basketball scholarship at Michigan.
In the early 1970s after his college basketball career was over, Fife began a brief career in professional baseball, getting called up to the big leagues with the Minnesota Twins and Tigers before arm injuries cut short his baseball career.
Fife eventually became an assistant under former Michigan coach Johnny Orr in the mid 1970s and then in 1982, returned to Clarkston to take over the basketball program. He quickly built one of the state’s most successful programs despite not having at his disposal the elite athletes that other school districts, such as Flint, Detroit, Saginaw and Pontiac, had.
Fife started a weekend youth league called the McGrath League, in honor of his high school head coach Bud McGrath, where current high school players still coach and officiate games played by those in grades three through eight.
Fife saw his son Dane, now an assistant head coach at Michigan State, win the Mr. Basketball award in 1998 before embarking on a college career at Indiana. There were few, if any, better-coached teams than Clarkston, but that still didn’t prevent heartache after heartache.
From 1998-2008, Clarkston lost in the state quarterfinals seven times, including six straight from 2003-2008. Three of those losses were in overtime, including in 2008 to a Saginaw team led by current Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green, and another by 2 points.
Clarkston finally got over the quarterfinal hump in 2009 and advanced to the semifinals for the first time under Fife, but lost to Kalamazoo Central in a rout.
It had been Fife’s lifelong dream to win a state title, but it didn’t look as iit would happen until Loyer arrived and the Wolves achieved it last year.
It was not only a win for the current players, the community and Fife, but for all the former players who tried so hard to deliver that championship moment for their coach.
“To finally win one not only for coach Fife and ourselves, but our past players and foundation of Clarkston basketball, it was really special,” Loyer said.
Sweet repeat
Even better than winning the first was winning a second, which Clarkston easily did on March 24 with an 81-38 destruction of Holland West Ottawa in the state title game. Foster Loyer couldn't have gone out on a better note, scoring a game-high 40 points to follow up a 42-point performance in Friday's semifinal.
When John Loyer’s time as interim Pistons head coach ended in 2014 with the hiring of current Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy, there was no thought at all that the Loyers would move from Clarkston for the same reason they came: Dan Fife.
“I asked coach Fife if he was going to be here for all four of (Foster’s) years,” said John Loyer, now a scout for the Los Angeles Clippers. “He said that he would and that was good enough for me.”
Katie Loyer said the family quickly learned of Fife’s history of near-misses, and that lit a fire right away under Foster to change things.
“Foster saw that there was no state championship banner in the gym,” Katie Loyer said. “He said, ‘We need to get a banner up there.’”
Fife and Clarkston now have to say goodbye to Foster Loyer, who will play in college for Michigan State. But he will never, ever be forgotten.
The same couldn’t have been said for that original email from Katie Loyer to Fife, but it still worked out for the Loyers, Fife and Clarkston.
“We were lucky to get him and proud to have him,” Fife said.