Longtime Monroe head football coach Charles Truitt steps down

Longtime Monroe football coach Charles Truitt, a fixture on the sidelines at Tornado football games for nearly 20 years, is stepping down, the Dougherty County School System announced Thursday.

Truitt has been the Albany high school’s head football coach since 2004. It was his second head coaching job in Georgia after guiding Sumter County in 2002 and 2003.

His duties will be scaled back now with the removal of football coaching duties. He plans to continue as a health and physical education teacher at Monroe.

“Coach Truitt has had a long and distinguished career at Monroe as head football coach, but we certainly understand and respect his decision to step aside,” Monroe principal Fred Polite said in a school release. “Filling his shoes will be a tough job.”

Truitt is Monroe’s career leader in victories by a head football coach with 85, according to Georgia High School Football Historians Association records. His total is well ahead of the previous record-holder Winfred Benson, who won 62 games at Monroe over two tenures, 1967-78 and 1987-92.

Truitt led 10 Monroe teams to the state playoffs, highlighted by his 2006 team that went 10-2 and won the Region 1-AAA championship. His final team had an abbreviated 2020 season impacted greatly by the COVID-19 pandemic, and played just four games. Before 2020, his previous three teams at Monroe had qualified for the state playoffs.

The search for a new Monroe football coach is expected to start this week when the district finalizes the position announcement and job posting.

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