Throughout his career, Robbie Pruitt has proven to be one of the top high school football coaches in the Southeast. He has served as the head coach for three high school programs in Florida and three schools in Georgia, leading his teams to a combined 10 state finals appearances and winning seven state championships.
What Pruitt has recently accomplished makes him not only one of the top high school head football coaches in Georgia and Florida, but also sets him apart from any other head football coach in the United States. Robbie Pruitt has become the only high school football coach in America to win at least 200 games in two different states.
He accomplished that feat on Oct. 26 with his 200th overall win as a head coach in Florida. Pruitt led his Williston Red Devils to a 49-21 win over Trinity Catholic from Orlando to give him 200 career wins as a Florida high school head coach.
He also won 209 games in Georgia, where he coached at three different programs.
Pruitt is in his 42nd year overall as a head coach, with his entire coaching career spent in just Florida and Georgia.
He began his career as a head football coach in 1984 at University Christian High School in Jacksonville, Florida, where he led the school to four state championships in just nine seasons.
He left there and was hired to take over a Union County team that had not made the state playoffs in 17 seasons. Pruitt changed that right away, leading Union County to the playoffs in his very first year in 1993 and every season after that. Pruitt spent seven years at Union County, where he led that program to state titles in 1994, 1995, and 1996.
Pruitt began his Georgia coaching career in 2000 at Fitzgerald High School. He led the Purple Hurricanes to the state finals in his first season as their head coach, falling just short by a 6-0 final score in a defensive battle with Swainsboro. He coached at Fitzgerald for three seasons.
He left Fitzgerald for one season to coach at Warner Robins High School, where he led the Demons to a 6-4 record. That one season of six victories included Pruitt’s 200th career win.
Pruitt returned to Fitzgerald the very next season in 2004. This time, Pruitt led the Hurricanes to five region championships, two region runner-up finishes, and two state semifinal appearances over an eight-year stay.
In 2012, Pruitt left Fitzgerald for Coffee High School. Before Pruitt’s arrival, Coffee had not enjoyed much success with its football program. That changed under Pruitt. The Trojans advanced to the quarterfinals in 2016 under Pruitt, marking just the fourth time in 89 years that the program had made it that far. The next season, in 2017, Pruitt led Coffee to its first-ever state finals appearance. After ultimately coming up short in overtime following a missed 26-yard field goal, Coffee advanced to at least the quarterfinals in three of the next six seasons, along with two trips to the state semifinals over that stretch.
In 2022, Pruitt returned to Florida to take over a struggling Williston program that had won just five games in the three seasons prior to Pruitt’s arrival. They were 1-9 in 2021, but in Pruitt’s first season, 2022, he led them to a 10-1 season and a trip to the region quarterfinals. The next year was even better, with an 11-1 finish and a trip to the region finals in 2023.
Last year Pruitt continued his run of success with the Red Devils, leading the team to an 8-5 season and coming within a game of reaching the state finals. Williston made it to the state semifinals, losing to top-seeded Hawthorne.
Pruitt is currently in his 42nd season as a high school football coach and said he wasn’t aware of the record until just recently.
“I really didn’t know about it until last year when I received a call from a reporter asking me about it,” Pruitt said. “I was told that I was four wins away from reaching 400 total wins in both states, and it just blew my mind.”
Pruitt said that while he’s been fortunate throughout his career, he’s also been given opportunities that have allowed him to be successful.
“I’ve been blessed to have been hired at places where they hadn’t had a lot of success before I got there, and the administration at those schools allowed me to do the things I needed to make the programs better,” Pruitt said.
Robbie Pruitt was the youngest coach in Florida high school football history to have been inducted into the FHSAA Hall of Fame, as well as the youngest coach to ever win 100 games in the Sunshine State.
Pruitt said he has no plans to slow down anytime soon.
“I enjoy coaching, and I’ve been blessed,” he said. “I love what I do.”
