Last December, D.W. Daniel High School defeated Camden High School to record its sixth state championship in football. It was a huge moment for the South Carolina towns of Central, Clemson and Six Mile, but, more importantly, it was the coronation for former Daniel graduate and fifth-year Lions head coach Jeff Fruster
Fruster, who took over as head coach in 2016, knew he had big shoes to fill at Daniel. An alumnus of DWD, he was a part of two of the Lions’ four state championships in the 1990s, when he played under legendary head coach Allen Sitterle, and he later served as defensive coordinator for Daniel head coach Randy Robinson.
When Robinson left to become the head coach at Berkeley High School in 2016, Fruster was just one among a field of candidates, but it soon became clear to the Daniel administration that he was the man for the job.
“Both current and former players have praised him as a person and as a coach, and we know how much pride he has in this school and program,” said then Daniel principal Josh Young. “This job has been a lifelong goal of his.”
While he had no prior head coaching experience when he accepted the job, Fruster relied on what he learned from the two Daniel coaches before him as he entered his first year leading the Lions.
 “It has been big for me to have so much tutelage from both Allen Sitterle and Randy Robinson,” Fruster said. “Daniel was successful before Sitterle, but it really took off when he got here. Randy came up under his regime, and that is kind of how he learned a lot of the facets that made him successful.”
“I played under Sitterle and learned from him, and then, I coached under Robinson as he did Sitterle, so it is almost like a progression. One learned from one, and then, one learned from the other. Hopefully that is something that will just continue on here at Daniel.”
In his first season as head coach, Fruster took over a Daniel team that had gone 4-7 the season before and led them back above .500, as they finished 6-5. Despite a first round loss to York, there was plenty of optimism heading into Fruster’s second season.
“There is a lot that goes into the position,” Fruster said in reflection of his first year. “I felt like I was shown the right direction, but there are always going to be some things that you are going to encounter that are unexpected.”
In the following 2017 offseason, the unexpected hit Daniel as starting quarterback and current Clemson athlete Ben Batson transferred to Dorman. While Batson’s transfer proved to be the first step towards a season to forget for the Lions, it would take some time to realize.
Daniel opened the season traveling all the way down to Moncks Corner, S.C., to face defending Region VIII-AAAA champion Berkeley. A back-and-forth affair, the Lions pulled out a 17-10 victory.
The opening win ended up as the high point of Daniel’s season, as the Lions went 0-8 over the next nine weeks. The low point of the losing streak came when the Lions lost 51-14 to Greenville in a game where a running clock was implemented in the second half. Daniel managed to hang onto its 24-year consecutive playoff streak with a win at Pickens, but a first-round playoff loss to Greer cemented the Lions’ worst season, record-wise, since 1981.
“I learned quite a bit,” Fruster said of the 2017 season. “We had to deal with adversity. We learned about falling short of our goals, but there were also positives to be taken away from last year.”
“We looked at every game with a blank slate-type mentality and just tried to go out there and perform like every game was our last. The record is obviously not indicative of the level of play we have come to know.”
Daniel seemed to learn from the lessons of 2017, as they raced out to an 8-0 start in 2018 behind the play of quarterback and current Clemson safety Tyler Venables. Daniel put a dominant offense on the field, pounding opponents by an average of 31 points per game heading into a region championship matchup with BHP.
“We always believed this was just around the corner,” Fruster said of the Lions’ turnaround. “We believed in one another and what we could do as a family.”
In the final game of the regular season, the Lions were beaten down 42-21 by a powerful Bears team, falling short of their championship aspirations heading into the playoffs.
Despite the disappointing loss, Fruster made history two weeks later getting his first playoff win as the coach of the Lions against Eastside High School. The win was the Lions’ first in the playoffs since a 2013 State Championship Game appearance, but it presented the Lions with their toughest challenge yet in four-time defending state champion South Pointe.
Set in Rock Hill, S.C., the game seemed like too big a stage for the Lions early, as they trailed 14-0. However, Daniel stormed back and played the Stallions to a stalemate through four quarters, leading to overtime. After two overtime periods, the Lions managed to pull out the biggest win of Fruster’s career to that point as Venables snuck into the end zone on a two-point conversion for a 50-49 win.
“This ranks pretty high,” Fruster said of the win. “And I won two state championships and went to three. My experiences as a coach versus my experiences as a player are kept on two different shelves. So as the coach of my alma mater, this will be one of my fondest memories by far.”
The Lion’s Cinderella story continued the next week with a win against Wren, but a loss to Greer in the Upper State Championship ended their season.
With an Upper State appearance in hand, Daniel entered Fruster’s fifth year with high aspirations.
 “We want to win the opener. We want to win the county. We want to win the region. And we want to win the last game, whenever that should be,” Fruster said on his yearly goals. “I truly believe if you achieve all four of those goals, you end up in the place that you want to be.”
The Lions had hit their first two goals the year prior winning their first game and beating all four county opponents and matched that within the first eight games of the season in 2019. In Week 9, the Lions finally reached their third goal, beating BHP 31-28 on the road for their first region title under Fruster.
All that was left for Daniel was to win the last game of the year, and they appeared to be on track, winning their first two rounds of the playoffs before being upset in the Upper State semifinal by a Ridge View team that Daniel had beaten earlier in the season.
The upset was a huge disappointment for Daniel, and with the loss of All-State players, like Venables, Hack Hamilton and Jared Kirksey, alongside COVID-19 throwing a wrench in the Lions’ offseason program, expectations were tempered going into the 2020 season.
Despite the challenges in front of them, the Lions got off to a rousing start, hammering Seneca and Pendleton before preparing for their biggest test of the season against defending 4A State Champion Wren. To make matters worse, quarterback Jackson Crosby, who started the first two games at the position for the Lions, was out due to contact tracing, forcing the Lions to turn to junior quarterback Trent Pearman.
Pearman proved to be up to the challenge, and the Lions downed the Hurricanes. Daniel won out the rest of the regular season behind Pearman, securing their second region title, but there was still one goal for the Lions to reach.
Beginning the playoffs against Chester, the Lions went on an unstoppable run, beating them by 31 points before defeating 3A power Chapman on the road. One win away from a State Championship Game berth, the Lions downed Wren for a second time to head to their first state title game since 2013.
Against Camden in the State Championship Game, Fruster and his team reached their final goal by defeating the Bulldogs 52-31 to win the Lion’s first state championship since 1998.
“It means more than words can describe,” Fruster said of the win. “To be able to take my alma mater back to the place that I was fond of being as a player means a lot to me.”
The win was the climax of five years of hard work for Fruster and his team, as they took the Lions from two wins in 2017 to 32 wins over the next three years.
“Coach ‘Fru’ has preached it since I was a freshman,” Crosby said of the unity at Daniel. “Even through those hard times, he told us that if we stuck together, we could accomplish anything.”
Fruster and company hope the success continues as they prepare for another season in 2021.