Region 1-AAAAA added another one of the state’s top coaches when Coffee hired Robby Pruitt on Tuesday to head up its football program.

Pruitt, who has been the head coach at Fitzgerald for 11 of the last 12 years — he was the head coach at Warner Robins in 2003 — will succeed Ken Eldridge, who was not retained after last season.

During his coaching career, Pruitt has an overall record of 293-55-1. He was 120-21-1 as the head coach of the Purple Hurricanes.

He is the second highly successful coach this month to join what will be Region 1-AAAAAA.

Last week, Tift County hired  John Reid to fill the vacancy created when Jay Walls resigned after the Blue Devils went 3-7 last season.

Reid was at Class AAAA East Paulding High the past six seasons, posting a 60-15 record.

Pruitt has been successful as a high school coach in both Florida and Georgia.

Inducted into the Florida High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000, Pruitt was the youngest coach to win 100 games in the history of Florida High School Football, and at that time was the youngest individual to be inducted into the FHSAA Hall of Fame. While coaching in Florida, he won seven state championships, including four at Jacksonville University Christian where he began his coaching career, and three more at Union County in Lake Butler.

While coaching in Florida, he went 167-30 and when he left, he had won more state championships that any other coach in Florida high school history.

He also held the state record for 52 straight victories.

Pruitt was named the NFICA National Coach of the Year in 1996 and the Bobby Dodd National Coach of the Year in 1998.

In 2007, he was named as one of the 12 greatest high school football coaches in state history by the Florida High School Athletic Association.

When he took over the Fitzgerald program in 2000, the Purple Hurricanes had won just nine games in the previous five seasons.

In his first year, he took Fitzgerald to the state championship game.

While at Fitzgerald, Pruitt’s teams have made two championship, four semifinal and seven quarterfinal appearances. He has compiled a record of 126-25-1 in Georgia and has a career winning percentage of .840.

Pruitt is a graduate of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., where he graduated cum laude, earning his bachelor of science degree in kinesiology.

He  played running back while attending Liberty, and as a sophomore broke the school record for the longest run from the line of scrimmage.

Pruitt is married and has three sons, all whom played high school football for their father and went on to play at the college level.

His wife Jill is a guidance counselor.

“I am excited and look forward to continue building on what Coach Ken Eldridge, Coach Jerry Odom, and Coach Bonwell Royal started,” Pruitt said after being introduced by School Superintendent Morris Leis on Tuesday.

“We want to build a program that everyone is excited about.  I appreciate the opportunity and I can’t wait to get started.”  

Also on Tuesday it was announced that Walls had been named the head coach at Navarre High School near Pensacola, Fla.

Walls started his high school coaching career at Crestview in 1989.

Over a 15-year career as a head coach, Walls has  a record of 103-71 and has made the playoffs 11 times.

Before his most recent stint at Tift County where he led the program to a 12-2 record and a state runner-up finish in 2006, he took his first head coaching job at Suwannee (1997-2005) and led them to a State runner-up finish as well in 1999.

“They’ve been pretty dang good the past five or six years,” Walls told Pat Flynn of the Northwest Florida Daily News.

 “They’ve been really competitive and I was here for eight years in the Panhandle and loved it.”