Marian has announced that Damian Fritz will be its new head girls basketball coach.

Fritz will replace legendary head coach Paul Brutto, who announced his retirement in early July.

Coach Fritz brings over 20 years of coaching experience, including stints as the head coach of the Lehighton and Jim Thorpe’s boys programs. In the 2003-04 season, he guided the Indians to a 5-19 record. He then led the Olympians in 2004-05 (17-8) and 2005-06 (12-13), compiling a mark of 29-21 at Thorpe.

For the past seven seasons, he has been a member of the Marian boys basketball program, serving as an assistant coach under John Patton.

In addition to his coaching experience, Fritz and his family have been a fixture at Marian over the past seven years. He and his wife, Kristin, have four children including sons, Tyler, a 2020 graduate of Marian and the school’s all-time leading basketball scorer with 1,959 points, and Logan, a rising senior on the Colts basketball team, along with two daughters Ava, an incoming freshman, and Addison, who is in eighth grade.

Coach Fritz graduated from Tamaqua Area High School, where he scored 802 career points from 1990-93.