ORLANDO, Fla. — A half-century ago, we were just a bunch of country kids on the outskirts of a little speck on the map known as Melrose, Fla. We were running wild among the scrub oaks and piney woods. We were the Lake Winnott boys, living just a skipped stone from that little lake where we’d spend our days swimming and fishing. Or maybe we’d go squirrel hunting or play tackle football without pads in the dirt road in front of Ricky, Robin and Craig’s house. Or maybe we’d go steal some oranges and persimmons from Old Man Priese’s fruit trees.
We didn’t have TikTok. We didn’t have PlayStations or iPhones. We had three television channels — if the antenna was pointed just right. We had bicycles and BB guns, dirt roads and two-lane blacktops, and — thank God — childhoods that forged friendships for life.
Among us was Robby Pruitt.
He was tough even back then. One of my most vivid memories of Robby came on the school bus when an older kid started picking on him. Robby didn’t back down. He clocked the boy right in the throat. As the scuffle carried on, the bus started pulling away from his stop. Robby did what only Robby would do — he opened the emergency door and leapt straight out the back of the moving bus and darted across the road toward his house. That was Robby. Fearless. Feisty. Determined.
And now, more than 50 years later, he’s still all those things — only now he’s also a legend.
Last Friday night, Robby Pruitt made history. His Williston Red Devils beat Ocala Trinity Catholic, 49-21, making him the first high school football coach ever to win 200 games in two different states. In Florida alone, he once held the record with seven state championships. He’s piled up 409 career victories, 101 losses and one tie. His career stretches from University Christian in Jacksonville to Union County in Lake Butler, from Fitzgerald and Coffee in Georgia to now back home in Florida.
But here’s the thing — his story isn’t really about numbers. It’s about people.
When I called Robby this week, I wanted to tell him I was proud of him. Not just because of the wins, the championships, the trophies. But because of what he became — a great father, husband, leader, teacher and molder of young men.
“You know, that’s the best part of this job,” Robby told me. “The wins are nice, but the best part is hearing from players years later. I’ve had hundreds of texts and calls from guys I coached — now they’re successful men, husbands and fathers — telling me the impact football and our time together had on them. That’s what really matters.”
That’s what makes Robby’s story so remarkable. For four decades, he’s been shaping lives through football.
He got his start in 1984 at University Christian, a head coach at just 22 years old. He went 79-10 there, winning four state titles. He moved to Union County in Lake Butler and built another powerhouse, going 88-20 and winning three more championships. In Georgia, he turned programs into contenders, capturing regional titles and playoff runs that became part of local lore. And when he came back to Florida in 2022, he wasted no time turning Williston into a winner again.
But as Robby told me, high school football isn’t the same as it was when we were boys dreaming of one day playing for tiny Interlachen High School.
“It’s harder to build programs now,” he said. “It’s not about developing players; it’s about gathering players. If you have a good player now, it’s hard to keep him. Players transfer at the drop of a hat. NIL has even come to high schools, and yes, some kids are getting paid. Back in the day, you built a program with kids who grew up together in the same community. You knew their families. You knew their stories. That part has changed.”
Still, Robby’s not bitter. He adjusts, he adapts, and he keeps coaching the way he’s always coached — with tough love, with honesty and with a deep belief that the game teaches life.
He could have gone into college coaching years ago. He was set to join Galen Hall’s staff at the University of Florida before Hall got fired. He decided then that high school football was his calling.
“All I ever wanted to do was coach kids,” Robby says. “I never thought about the money or any of that. I just enjoy being a coach.”
To all of us who grew up with him, he’s more than just a coach with a Hall of Fame résumé. He’s one of us. One of the Lake Winnott boys. The same boy who used to ride his bike with us down dusty roads, who used to fish for bluegill and bass in the lake, who used to be mesmerized by the beauty of that rare blonde squirrel darting like sunlight through the oaks.
Sometimes we’d lose track of each other for years at a time. The last time I saw Robby was at Craig’s memorial service. Life took us all in different directions, but we always kept up with Robby. We read about his state championships, his undefeated seasons, his then-state-record 52-game winning streak, his induction into the Florida High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame. And every time, we felt the same thing — pride. Because he was ours.
He says now we were blessed to have grown up where we did. Blessed to be raised in that rural innocence before the world got noisy. Blessed to have friendships forged between fishing holes and fireflies. And, yes, blessed to have a boyhood buddy who became a legend without ever forgetting where he came from.
In the movie “Stand By Me,” the adult narrator Gordie Lachance reflects on his childhood and writes, “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”
Robby is proof of that line.
He’s proof that you can come from the sticks of Melrose, Fla., and go on to make history. Proof that a kid tough enough to leap out the back of a moving school bus could one day become the kind of man hundreds of players and former players still call “Coach.”
And when I asked him about it — about the milestones, the records, the history — he didn’t talk about numbers at all.
Instead, he paused, thought back to those sunburned, skinned-knee summers and said:
“We grew up about as good as you can grow up, didn’t we?”
We did.
We sure did.
We grew up in a time and a place built on red clay, lake water and barefoot boys playing dirt-road football. We grew up in a world without screens, where our imaginations filled the empty spaces and our laughter filled the evening air until mom called us home for supper.
And now, all these years later, one of those boys has gone on to become something bigger than we could have ever dreamed — a man who has shaped lives, galvanized communities and made history on Friday nights under the lights.
For all of us who grew up in that little patch of backwoods Florida, it’s good to know that he has carried a piece of our childhood with him every step of the way, and in doing so, he’s honored where we came from.
Coach Robby Pruitt is right.
We grew up about as good as you can grow up.
And maybe that’s the secret — that we never stopped being those firefly-chasing Lake Winnott boys at heart.
