VALDOSTA — Valdosta High is set to lose its first major piece from its 2016 state championship team.

Wildcats offensive coordinator Tucker Pruitt will become Fitzgerald’s next head coach. Pruitt’s hire was approved Monday evening at the Ben Hill Board of Education meeting.

Pruitt’s high school coaching career came full circle with a return to Valdosta, where he began his career with a season on former head coach Rance Gillespie’s staff in 2010 before coming back as Alan Rodemaker’s first offensive coordinator last season, and now he’ll return to where his high school playing career began.

Pruitt played quarterback at Fitzgerald under his father Robby Pruitt. He’ll return with a Class 6A state championship on his resume.

In his first season as Valdosta’s offensive coordinator, Pruitt built a unit that averaged 33.46 points and 317 yards per game en route to a 14-1 record and the program’s first state title since 1998.

The Wildcats offense ran the ball more effectively under Pruitt in 2016 than they had over the previous two seasons to the tune of 2,178 yards and 26 touchdowns at 4.96 yards per carry, but the offense overall was extremely balanced. Running a two-quarterback system, Valdosta produced 2,589 yards through the air in one of the toughest defensive regions in the state.

Pruitt’s success isn’t limited to his season at Valdosta.

Prior to his return to the Wildcats, Pruitt presided over a Lowndes offense that scored 31.9 points per game with a total of 1,722 rushing yards and 1,723 passing yards. He also spent a season as the offensive coordinator at Thomson before joining his father Robby’s staff at Coffee, where he served as offensive coordinator for two seasons — one of which featured an offense that averaged more than 375 yards per game behind Region 1-6A leading passer Tyree Paulk’s 1,839 yards and 24 touchdowns.

Pruitt will begin his career as a head coach at Fitzgerald six years after his father last roamed the sidelines for the Purple Hurricanes, and he’ll have some high-expectations to live up to at a program that has experienced tremendous success since the turn of the millennium.

Fitzgerald’s football program has gone 181-40-2 since 2000. The Purple Hurricanes have won fewer than 10 games in a season only three times in the past 16 years, and former head coach Jason Strickland went 38-6 over his final three seasons with the team.

Derrick Davis is the sports editor at the Valdosta Daily Times.