THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Sky's new limit is quite the honor for a North Idaho kid

Sky Pruitt played in two state championship football games while at Lakeland High.

Won three state titles in wrestling.

Went on to play in two bowl games.

After graduation, completed a full Ironman Coeur d’Alene — in 100-plus-degree heat.

Is headed into the North Idaho Athletic Hall of Fame next weekend.

But, despite all that …

“Probably, one of my biggest feats is getting a Texan out of Texas,” Pruitt said.

More on that part later.

Pruitt, 39, a Rathdrum native and a physical therapist in North Idaho for the past 10 years, is one of four hall of famers set to be honored at the North Idaho Sports Banquet next Saturday at The Coeur d’Alene Resort.

“I was obviously super humbled,” said Pruitt, when he received the news. “It’s exciting. My first thought was, don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of the career I had, but … there’s other guys … I was very humbled that my name even came up, and that I got inducted.”

SKY PRUITT was an offensive lineman at Lakeland when it was cool to be an offensive lineman at Lakeland.

In those days the Hawks, under longtime head coach Terry Kiefer, ran the ball.

And ran the ball.

And ran the ball some more.

“Everybody knew we were going to run the ball; we just did it. It was a blast,” said Pruitt, recalling the summers he and some of the other Lakeland linemen kept in shape by working for Joe Dobson, who ran cattle in Garwood near where the Pruitts lived.

Sky was an all-state offensive guard as a junior and senior, helping Lakeland reach the state title game each year.

And he was a first-team all-state defensive tackle as a senior, where he also kicked off and punted, and occasionally ran the ball.

PRUITT DIDN’T even start wrestling until eighth grade.

Prior to that, he played soccer, and baseball. He started playing football in sixth grade.

When he was in eighth grade, a teacher at Lakeland Junior High suggested he wrestle, so he decided to give it a try. Plus his father, Rob, was an accomplished wrestler.

Pruitt was undefeated as an eighth grader.

Then it was on to the varsity, where one of the older Hawks, Levi Cushman, took the freshman heavyweight under his wing, as it were.

“He was one of the nicest guys ever, but he was beating me up every single day, making sure I was tough,” Pruitt recalled. “He made sure to throw a hard cross-face and rub my forehead across that mat at least once every day.

“Levi toughened me up, and then (head coach Rob) Edelblute and (assistant coach Bob) Hickman made sure I stuck with it.”

The result — Pruitt qualified for state as a freshman, then won the state A-2 title at heavyweight each of the next three years.

“To this day, just winning those state championships … definitely my greatest athletic achievement, I feel like,” Pruitt said. “And the mental toughness … on the mat, it’s you. The toughness it teaches you, conflict and defeat … I feel like wrestling did a whole lot in all aspects of my life.”

THE 6-FOOT Pruitt, who topped out around 300 pounds as a senior in football, graduating from Lakeland in 2002, had all of one full-ride offer to play football in college — from North Texas. There, one of the assistant coaches was former St. Maries High quarterback Eric Russell, still tight with fellow St. Maries-ites Mike Bayley and Curt Carr, then assistant coaches at Lakeland.

A few others offered partial scholarships. Some said he could walk on.

Too short, most said.

Idaho, for one, showed little interest. Too bad, as Pruitt said it would have been nice to stay in a region where he could continue to go elk hunting and enjoy fishing and skiing.

At that time, North Texas and Idaho were in the Sun Belt Conference, so Pruitt, a defensive tackle for the Mean Green, enjoyed the two times his team played the Vandals — both North Texas victories, including one at the Kibbie Dome.

“I don’t remember how many tickets, but I remember getting a LOT of tickets,” Pruitt recalled of that game. “It was questionable whether my fan club or the Vandal crowd was larger at that point. It felt pretty dang good.”

Pruitt redshirted his first year at North Texas, but did get a taste of Bourbon Street when the team played Cincinnati in the New Orleans Bowl. He later played in bowl games vs. Memphis and Southern Miss, and regular-season games against Texas (three times) and Oklahoma (twice).

He remembers North Texas winning big at home vs. Baylor.

“Against SMU, I tipped a pass and intercepted it — as a nose tackle, that’s the dream,” Pruitt said.

Big return?

“About a yard and a half; I basically just fell forward,” he said.

PRUITT graduated from North Texas in 2007 with a major in kinesiology, and a minor in business management.

Why physical therapy?

“Back in those days, Lakeland had no trainers,” Pruitt recalled from his high school days.

Eventually, he said, Justin Kane, who owns North Idaho Physical Therapy, would stop by the school every week or so, and if someone had a minor injury, or needed taped, he would see them for free.

“I got to know Justin a little bit, and he helped me with my knee,” Pruitt said. “At the time, I thought, let’s see how that (PT) route goes.”

He was accepted into five physical therapy schools, and chose the University of Montana, because it got him “out of the Texas heat and back to the mountains.”

He finished PT school in 2010 — the same year he married Susan, whom he met at North Texas. She was from Midland, Texas — hence his “getting a Texan out of Texas.”

After working three years in Corvallis, Mont., he was offered a job by Kane in Post Falls. In 2015, he became part owner of the NIPT office in Rathdrum.

Sky and Susan, a registered dietician at Kootenai Health, have two children — Lyla, 10, and Bowen, 3.

And next weekend, Sky Pruitt will enjoy an honor he never saw coming.

“I’m doing better than I deserve, honestly,” he said. “Can’t complain … thankful every day. You look back and see where you came from … man, I’ve got it pretty good.”

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.