Williston football coach Robby Pruitt has certainly made his mark on high school football in the state of Florida.

The Florida High School Football Athletics Association (FHSAA) Hall of Fame coach has won seven state titles.

Pruitt won four (1987, 1989, 1991, 1992) Class A state titles at University Christian (Jacksonville), including a state runner-up finish in 1990.

UCS lost to eventual state champion Graceville in the 1988 state semifinals, denying Pruitt six straight championship game appearances.

“You know, we had some really good players, and we had good support,” he said. “That was my first ever job, so I didn’t know a whole lot. When I took that job, I was 23 years old as a head coach, so I was kind of learning on the run, but we were able to win the state championship.”

The 1990 state title game, a 6-3 loss to Westminster Academy (Fort Lauderdale) in the Class A state championship, was memorable for several reasons.

“We had a shot at winning five in a row, lost in the semifinals (’88) and then lost 6-3 to Danny Kanell his junior year,” Pruitt said. “At that time, it was the lowest-scoring state championship game ever. They kicked two field goals, and we kicked one. The last play of the game, they kicked the ugliest field goal in the world.”

Pruitt said that was one of the better teams that he’s had.

“We had a bunch of players, college kids, and then we played them the very next year, Danny Kanell’s senior year at Florida Field, and we didn’t have as good of kids, but we beat them that year (21-6),” he said. “That was some good times and good kids and good players.”

It’s another trip down memory lane as Pruitt and the Red Devils will travel to UCS for the Kickoff Classic on Friday, August 15.

“We played them last year (Kickoff Classic), and I played them when I was at Union County,” Pruitt said. “We played them when I was at Coffee County (GA), and so we played them every place that I’ve been…so this would be our fourth time playing them.”

After UCS, Pruitt won three state titles in a row at Union County (Lake Butler) from 1994-1996, including a then-state-record 52 straight wins.

That record came to an end about a decade later when the Lakeland Dreadnaughts won 53 in a row from 2004-07, including three straight Class 5A state titles.

In 1997, Pruitt became the youngest coach in Florida high school history to win 100 games, and last year he won his 400th game overall with a 38-7 win against Trinity Catholic (Ocala).

“It’s an honor, but at the same time, it’s not something that just kind of happens,” he said after the milestone. “Kinda tells you how old I am. It means more to have the people – I got two lifetime coaches on the sideline with me, two former players – that’s what means a whole lot more, honestly.”

Entering his fourth year as the head coach of the Red Devils, he now has a chance to put himself in a class all by himself.

Pruitt, who led Fitzgerald (GA) to the Class 3A final in 2000 and Coffee to the 6A championship game in 2017, is four wins from becoming the first high school football coach in America to win 200 games in two different states.

“That would be a first,” said Kevin Askeland of MaxPreps. “The closest I could find was Tommy Knotts, who has 176 wins at Dutch Fork (SC) and had 300 wins at Independence (NC).”

He had 209 wins in Georgia and currently has 196 in Florida.

“There’s not many times in life you can do something that hasn’t ever been done in the history of high school football,” Pruitt said. “The guy that told me (about the record) said that the way things are now, that may never be done again, so it’s an honor to do it in two states like Florida and Georgia.”

As someone who has coached in both the Peach State and the Sunshine State, he knows just how special that is.

Pruitt’s Georgia teams won eight region titles, and he had 14 seasons with at least 10 victories.

“I think the football is as good as it gets anywhere in the country, you know, in those two states,” he said.

Based on the success he’s already had at Williston, he will likely set the record in 2025.

When he took over in Levy County in 2022, the Red Devils had only won 13 games over five years (2017-2021) and went 1-8 the season before he was hired.

Pruitt was able to turn things around immediately in his first season.

The Red Devils outscored their first three opponents, 147-0, en route to a 10-0 regular season. They lost at home to Wildwood, 46-35, in the first round of the Class 1R state playoffs to finish 10-1.

He followed that up with another perfect regular season in 2023, followed by a 52-17 win against Pahokee in the first round of the state playoffs.

The Red Devils (11-1) lost at home to eventual state champion Hawthorne, 34-16, in the 1R-Region 4 Final.

Last year’s team struggled at times, finishing 6-4 during the regular season.

However, the Red Devils won a pair of playoff games against Chiefland and Fort White, followed by a season-ending loss at Hawthorne, 28-7, to finish 8-5.

“There were some growing pains,” Pruitt said. “We lost 23 seniors the year before, so we knew it was going to be tough early on. We took some bumps and bruises and went 6-4 in the regular season…but the good thing I told our players is we’re already in the playoffs, so what really matters is how we are at the end of the season. We got better and better and we made a run there.”

Williston entered last year’s Rural state tournament as the No. 13 seed out of 16 teams and was one win away from playing for the state title.

“I think we got as far as we could get with that team,” Pruitt said. “Hawthorne was better than we were. And really, Chiefland and Fort White could have been, but our kids played over their heads and played good. I thought we came a long way after we lost to Chiefland in the first game of the year. We wound up beating them in the first round, shutting them out, so I thought that was a testament to our kids and how much better they got over the course of the year.”

Turnovers prevented the Red Devils from winning double-digit games for a third straight year.

“Go back and look at the games we lost, all of them, we turned the ball over,” Pruitt said. “We could have won all of them. We had three or four fumbles against Eastside (21-14 road loss on Sept. 20). We had four or five against North Marion (20-14 road loss on Oct. 18), and I said we set the Guinness Book of World Records against Chiefland because I had a new center.”

They fumbled 11 snaps and only lost by eight points at Chiefland (18-10) in the season opener.

“I told them, look, we fumbled it three or four times outright and 11 fumbles,” Pruitt said. “You know, we should have gotten beaten by 40, but we only lost by eight, so we’ve got to do a better job of protecting the football.”

With four straight home games to open the season against Chiefland, Paxon (Jacksonville), Lake Minneola, and North Marion (Citra), Pruitt could reach his new milestone before the end of September.