Musial Awards will air Dec. 29 on CBS and stream on Paramount+
Larry Fitzgerald, Jr. Bob Costas. Ozzie Smith. Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
With all those people recently attending an awards ceremony, you wouldn’t think a Hendersonian would be in the same room with them.
But you’d be wrong.
Because there was Breasha Pruitt, a coach who owns Breasha Pruitt Elite Gymnastics in Evansville, on the stage of the Stan Musial Awards accepting a national honor for extraordinary sportsmanship.
The award ceremony recognized Costas and Fitzgerald, but also recognized were ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Five people and two teams from around the country, including Pruitt, were honored at the Nov. 23 ceremony for national sportsmanship awards.
Pruitt was recognized because of her selflessness when she took on coaching gymnasts from another gym.
“Just two weeks before a major state competition in March, the coach at a nearby gym was injured and unable to coach or make the meet. So, in addition to 15 of her own athletes, Breasha stepped up to coach nine of her rivals,” said the Musial Awards website.
Pruitt says the coach was severely injured and much of what was going on with her was kept private. Because they didn’t know what to do or who could help, parents of daughters who trained at Revolution in Newburgh called other coaches in search of some help—especially in light of the upcoming Indiana state meet a couple weeks away. The other coaches turned them down.
When the father of one of the gymnasts called Pruitt, she didn’t flinch.
Though her BP Elite gymnasts and the Revolution gymnasts are rivals, Pruitt had worked for months and years training her own gymnasts, and they’d face off against each other at state, Pruitt said, “I immediately told him ‘Sure.’”
Pruitt got the call on a Friday. On Monday, the new gymnasts started training at her gym. She held a team meeting and told the new girls that she wasn’t there to replace their former coach, but only to get them to and through the state competition. She also made T-shirts honoring their former coach.
At the state competition, Pruitt said the new gymnasts had their highest scores all year, and of her original squad, two won state championships.
Months later, when the Revolution gym didn’t reopen, all nine of the new gymnasts that came to train at BP Elite returned to train under Pruitt for the new season.
Pruitt said in part that’s a testament to her coaching style, which is not the in-your-face style that gymnastics observers have seen through the years. It’s also in sharp contrast to some of the very negative aspects of the sport and its coaching that have come out in the national media in recent years.
For that, Pruitt has also won another award. In 2022, she was awarded Double-Goal National Coach of the Year, an honor that came from the Positive Coaching Alliance, a national organization that aims to create a positive youth sports environment.
Much of Pruitt’s style is based first on her positive personality but also on avoiding some of the negative coaching she encountered during her gymnastics career.
In the sixth grade, she moved to Texas to get high-level coaching that would allow her to pursue her Olympic dreams. She encountered some difficult times and sometimes harsh coaching and at one point was “gym homeless” which caused her father (Henderson City Commissioner Robert Pruit) to frantically call around in search of a coach and gym. (That’s something, Breasha said, that was similar to the Revolution girls’ ordeal in the spring.)
Pruitt eventually made her way to Pennsylvania to train. But injuries hampered her progress and dreams. In 9th grade, she moved back to Henderson and continued to train in Evansville. She graduated from Henderson County High School in 2002 and won a scholarship to the University of Georgia. Again injuries affected her, and she decided to come home after her freshman year to attend the University of Southern Indiana.
She at first didn’t know if she wanted to get into gymnastics again. “I remembered there was a time the sport wasn’t good to me,” she said. “I didn’t know if I wanted to be a part of it.”
But she agreed to help one girl with one-on-one coaching, and that led to more opportunities and jobs in other Evansville gyms.
After years, she opened her own gym in August 2018. Since then, Pruitt has strived to create a culture in her gym that is “like no other.”
She won’t tolerate the negative coaching she dealt with in the past—her goal that her students “never go through anything like that”—and she coaches each child, pushing them to be great people, she said.
“I want them to be good people, trustworthy people,” Pruitt said.
At the award ceremony, Larry Fitzgerald, Jr., a former All-Pro receiver with the Arizona Cardinals, was awarded the Musial Award for Extraordinary Character. Meanwhile, longtime sportscaster Bob Costas, who has announced virtually every athletic competition there is during his long career, was awarded the Stan Musial Lifetime Achievement Award for Sportsmanship. The room was also full of legends, including Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
“I was in awe,” she said, adding that she got to talk to Joyner-Kersee and the track and field legend hugged her and commented on her dress.
For her efforts, Pruitt was also honored Tuesday with the city of Henderson’s Community Spotlight award, which every month singles out individuals or groups that are making positive contributions.
“I think I’m a good person, but she’s a thousand times better than me,” Robert Pruitt told the Hendersonian.
Breasha Pruitt wasn’t looking for anything when she said she’d train her gym’s rival gymnasts.
“I did it,” she said, “because it was the right thing to do.”
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Read more about Breasha Pruitt on the Musial Awards website, go to: Breasha Pruitt – Musial Awards
According to the Musial Awards website, the 2024 Musial Awards will air nationally on Sunday, December 29 on CBS and stream on Paramount+. Check the local listings for the airtime in your city.
