Prestridge entering retirement after hall-of-fame-worthy coaching career
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RCHS head football coach Pat Prestridge has been talking about and hinting at and joking around about his retirement for years. One year in the not-so-distant past a reporter at the annual preseason media day started to ask a question by saying, “Coach, I’m going to put you on the spot,” and before the subsequent question could even be spoken, Prestridge joked, “I’m retiring.”
Of course he didn’t retire that year or any other year – until now.
After 33 years in coaching and 24 years as a head football coach, Prestridge has decided to hang it up, leaving behind a hall-of-fame-worthy legacy in multiple sports at his alma mater and the school he has become synonymous with.
The final call to retire was not an easy one, even as the talk intensified throughout the year.
“I was back-and-forth and back-and-forth all the way up until about a month ago,” he said.
Ultimately the pull of the profession that has occupied his life for over three decades was no match for the pull of his 6-year-old grandson Kason.
“I guess the main reason is I really started thinking about wanting to spend time with him,” Prestridge said.
The memories of missing out on some of those formative youthful moments when his own kids Hannah and Andrew were that age were too strong to ignore.
“For the last 30 years my family has sacrificed for me, going to ballfields, going to football fields, baseball games, basketball games. Because my kids played [youth sports] at one time too, and I missed out on a lot of their stuff when they were young,” Prestridge said.
He got to coach his son Andrew in three sports in high school. But he missed out on most of his daughter Hannah’s athletic career because when she was playing volleyball, he was coaching football. When she was playing softball, he was coaching baseball.
“I didn’t want to go through that same thing with my grandson and missing out on him,” Prestridge said.
While the rumors of Prestridge’s retirement have swirled for years (and he did nothing but egg them on), this year seemed a little bit different even before it began.
Prestridge’s wife Amy, when she was out in June and July collecting sponsorship checks for the RCHS football field signs, mentioned that this might be the coach’s last season.
After he finished an interview following his team’s preseason game against Handley at Wright Field, Prestridge wanted to make sure he had a photo of himself on that field before he walked back to the locker room that night.
And perhaps the biggest clue of all came in RCHS’s final regular season home game against Hokes Bluff, when the possibility that he may be walking off that field for the last time become oh-so-real.
Prestridge was unable to keep up his normally stoic demeanor, and the emotion of the moment got to him as he was surrounded by family and asked about the possibility of this being his last game on Ron Watters Field at Hulond Humphries Stadium.
In an interview Wednesday, after he told his players about his decision in a meeting Tuesday afternoon, Prestridge admitted that as early as the third game of this past season, the end was on his mind.
“I did go in this past fall after the Dadeville game, that Friday night we won 35-34, and told Stick [RCHS principal Clifton Drummonds] that it may be my last rodeo this year,” he said.
But even in the midst of those clues during the season he was publicly non-committal, often reiterating that he had not made up his mind and still had some thinking and praying to do on the matter.
With all the highs and the things he has accomplished you can see how it would be difficult to walk away.
Prestridge is the all-time winningest football coach at RCHS, a status he achieved by surpassing his mentor and predecessor, hall-of-famer Ron Watters. He ends his career with a record of 167-73 at the school and 184-96 overall after he spent four years at Oakman to start his head coaching career. His teams at RCHS went to the playoffs 16 of his 20 years and won the 2003 Class 2A state championship, still the only football title in the school’s history.
He led two more teams to the state semifinals in 2015 and 2018 and reached the state championship game one more time in 2017, missing out on a second title in a 26-14 loss to Hillcrest-Evergreen.
“I basically just tried to pick up where coach Watters left off and tried to do half the job he did when he was here,” Prestridge said. “You’ve got to have a good staff. I’ve been blessed over the years with good athletes and coaches and administrators. It’s just an honor to be able to carry on that tradition that he started years ago in the 70’s, and hopefully somebody else can carry it on now.”
Prestridge’s success was not confined to the football field. He also led the baseball team to the state finals in 2015, still the only baseball team in county history to play for a state title.
His baseball coaching win-loss record may never be fully known since he began coaching the sport in the mid-1990s at Oakman and also had a stint at Parrish in the early 2000s. But he took RCHS to the state semifinals in 2013 and then to the championship series in 2015. No other county baseball team has ever advanced past the third round.
He did not close the door on possibly coaching again one day. He’s only 55 years old and opportunities will surely be abundant for a coach with his pedigree to perhaps take on an assistant coaching role somewhere.
“I might get back in it one day. I might stay out a year and go back. I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know yet where the Good Lord will lead me to.”
In all those years winning all those games, Prestridge was always quick to deflect praise and stand firmly on his it’s-not-about-me philosophy. And he never talked about winning or dwelled on it long when asked about it. His answers to those questions almost always ended up with a similar answer that he gave Wednesday when asked about the legacy he hopes to leave with his coaching career.
“A state championship is great,” he said. “But I guess the biggest thing is if those kids learn anything about being a great father and a great person and great leader and a great husband in the world, that’s more than a state championship to any coach.”
