Lee County High School football has emerged from the past to become a powerhouse

LEESBURG — In the mid 1980s and well into the early 2000s, Lee County High School football was a mess, wallowing around in a sea of badness hoping for mediocrity. The Trojans were standard homecoming fare for many teams in the region.

But not anymore.

When former coach David Johnson left the program in 2010 after an 0-10 season, the Lee County Board of Education turned to a somewhat brash Peach County High School assistant coach by the name of Dean Fabrizio.

They didn’t know it at the time, but they had just hired the messiah of Lee County football.

In Fabrizio’s time at the helm, the Trojans are 74-35, fresh off the 2017 Class AAAAAA state championship with a 14-1 record, and are currently 8-0 and riding the crest of a 14-game winning streak. Ranked No. 1 in AAAAAA, Lee is also ranked 44th in the nation by maxpreps.com

Lee’s lone loss last year was to perennial power Valdosta High School. That loss was avenged last week as the Trojans routed the Wildcats 63-7. It was the worst loss in 113 years of Valdosta football.

The current version of the Trojans just well might be the best in school history. In eight games so far this year, the offense has scored 341 points while the defense has given up 30 points, with three via shutouts and has not yielded more than seven points in the remaining eight games.

Do the math … Lee is not beating its opponents, the Trojans are crushing them by an average score of 42.6 to 3.75. Little wonder that the homecoming invites have dried up.

So, how did Fabrizio, a Long Island, N.Y. boy, wind up deep in the heart of southwest Georgia?

“I had a lot of friends who have coached in Georgia and they always talked about how good it was and how good the situations are,” the Long Island native said. “They talked about how good the good the pay was along with the quality of life. We had a great team coming back at Peach and I loved it there, loved the kids and the community.’

Fabrizio had spent a year at Peach County when the Lee County job came open.

“I really just threw my name into the hat here to see if I could get an interview for the job. I didn’t know much about the situation because I’d only been here for a year,” Fabrizio said. “As things worked out they kinda offered me the job. I had a couple of kids getting getting ready to enter school and I knew they had a great school system and that was a big draw for me.

“I also realized that they had not had a lot of success football wise and the more research I did, I didn’t see anything that was precluding them from being successful. I mean there wasn’t anything built in that was making it tough. The support I got from (former superintendent Larry Walters) and Kevin Dowling who was the principal at the time when I was hired, and the school board and the kind of commitment they showed to get all of their athletics to a top-notch level was something that stood out to me. I’ll be honest, a lot of people told me not to take the job, you’ll never win there. But I thought they had the ingredients here to be successful.”

School Board Chairman Frank Griffin has a unique perspective on the hiring of Fabrizio. Griffin is a 1991 graduate, played football at Lee, was a member of the board who hired the coach and has two sons who play on the high school and middle school teams.

“The first time I met Dean I knew he was a different kind of leader, but he was a man who had a program in mind,” Griffin said. “After he got some time under his belt, that became clear. But I had no idea how deep that difference would go. We’ve had a successful football program unlike any I would have ever imagined. Back in 1991 I would have never predicted we would be a powerhouse in high school football. Baseball? Sure. But football? Absolutely not.

“The program he is working makes such a difference, not only on the field, but in the the lives of the players. We don’t have discipline problems in the high school as far as the football players go and the influence they carry into the classroom is having a positive impact on every student they come in contact with.”

Winning consistently, however, can have its drawbacks. Alabama’s Nick Saban warns his players constantly about complacency and “drinking the rat point” of entitlement.

Fabrizio is aware of that potential problem.

“When you are in a region as tough as ours it’s not hard to focus and get motivated for the next game,” the coach said. “What is different now is we talk a more about staying hungry and staying humble. We can’t think too much of ourselves and not listening to everybody tell you how great you are. We have to find a way to stay ungrey and motivate our players and still try and get better every day.”

Lee will put its winning streak on the line tonight when it entertains 2-6 Houston County High School before closing the regular season on the road at Coffee County High School, who the Trojans beat in overtime to win the 2017 state title.