DeWitt community mourning loss of impactful coach, teacher Marcus Fray

Rob Zimmerman remembers hearing about a young elementary school teacher who played football and was passionate about sports who he needed to meet.

That individual was Marcus Fray.

It took a couple years for Zimmerman to connect with Fray, who spent those early years trying to establish himself as a teacher.

But once Fray eventually joined the program, Zimmerman immediately saw the impact.

"He was (with) our freshman (team) his first year and we moved him to the varsity immediately the second year because he did such a great job," Zimmerman said. "He was tremendous in every capacity of his life. Coaching wasn't any different than anything else that he did. He was an outstanding coach like everything else."

The DeWitt community is mourning the loss of Fray, who died Monday at age 33 after a two-year battle with ALS.

Even through his health challenges, Zimmerman said Fray always remained positive and wanted to talk about football. The sport was one of his passions in addition to being around his family, which includes two young kids. Fray kept up with the Division 3 No. 2-ranked Panthers and watched film of practices and games.

"I don't think you could find a better role model for kids than Marcus Fray was," Zimmerman said. "He was a tremendous teacher and great husband, father, great coach. Everybody loved him. He worked unbelievably hard, he went 110%. He cared so much about the kids in DeWitt. I think one thing that always stood out to us as coaches, and I'm sure other teachers, is how selfless he was. Northing was ever for Marcus, it was always for everybody else.

"The impact that he had — I don't even know how to explain it. He was just so well liked because he was such a great person and did such a great job in every aspect. I think everybody would love to be the kind of person that Marcus Fray was."

The DeWitt community rallied in support of Fray two years ago at a football game and will recognize his life Saturday when the Panthers face Cedar Springs in a Division 3 regional final at Grand Ledge.

Zimmerman said the team will wear helmet stickers sporting "FS" to signalize Fray Strong. T-shirts are also being made for the players, coaches and others around the football program and also will be displayed to recognize him.

"I'm sure we will do a lot of other things down the road because of the impact he had on our program," Zimmerman said.

RELATED: #CoachFrayStrong: DeWitt supports Panthers football coach recently diagnosed with ALS

Contact Brian Calloway at bcalloway@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @brian_calloway.

This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Late DeWitt teacher, coach Marcus Fray touched lives of many