COACHING NEWS: Pruitt departs from Williston; could Union County (again) be the next stop?

WILLISTON, Fla. — Williston has begun its search for a new head football coach following the departures of head coach Robby Pruitt and assistant coach Caleb Dukes, the Williston Football Booster Club announced Tuesday afternoon.

Both coaches are leaving to pursue new opportunities to continue their coaching careers, according to the announcement.

“We appreciate their hard work and the strong values they have brought to our football program,” the booster club wrote in a Facebook post.

Pruitt is departing after his fourth season with the Red Devils, finishing with a 10-2 overall record in 2025 after falling to eventual Class Rural state champion Hawthorne 30-8 in the regional finals. The season marked another double-digit win campaign for Pruitt at Williston.

In September, Pruitt became the first coach anywhere in the United States to win 200 games in two different states. He reached the milestone on Sept. 26 against Trinity Catholic, adding 200 wins in Florida to the 200 he won in Georgia. That victory put his win total at 409 games after capturing his 400th victory earlier in the 2025 season.

Pruitt’s overall coaching career record stands at 415-102-1.

During the search process, David Vaughn will serve as director of football operations, while Adrian Weeks will serve as interim head coach. Weeks will handle questions and concerns from students and the community.

The Red Devils have already started a search committee to hire a new head coach.

No timeline for the hiring process was provided in the announcement.

Multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told FloridaHSFootball.com that Pruitt may be heading to Union County in Lake Butler, about a 40-minute drive north of Gainesville, where his name became part of the national landscape in the mid-1990s.

Pruitt gained national attention when the Union County Tigers rolled to a 52-game winning streak from 1994 to 1997 that resulted in three consecutive FHSAA Class 3A state championships in 1994, 1995 and 1996.

His winning efforts resulted in him being inducted into the FHSAA’s Florida High School Athletic Hall of Fame at age 38 in 2008. He was noted at the time to be the youngest head coach in the state to reach 100 wins, accomplishing that feat in 1997.

Before Pruitt’s tenure at Union County in the mid-1990s, he was the head coach at University Christian in Jacksonville, where he captured four Class A state championships in 1987, 1988, 1991 and 1992.

Currently Union County suffered a setback in 2025 with a 2-8 record overall under interim head coach Lamar Waters, finishing the 2025 season with a loss to Holmes County in the Rural FIT playoffs. Union County was recently announced as one of quite a few Class Rural teams that will be departing the FHSAA in football for the Sunshine State Athletic Association’s Atlantic League.