​For an entire year, Andy Price kept a passenger in his truck every time he climbed behind the wheel. It wasn’t a person, a pet, or anything that could wander into the cabin of his 1997 Ford Ranger on its own. Instead, Price’s constant companion was a tangible reminder of a goal he had sidelined for years—a Brazilian jiu-jitsu purple belt he earned in the early 2010s at The Armory Daytona, a now-closed MMA gym once owned by mixed martial artist and former UFC fighter Richard Crunkilton. “There were days I’d just tuck it behind the seat if somebody was popping in. It might sit there for a month, and I’d pull it back out onto the seat,” Price recalled. “Because I wasn’t married at the time, I lived by myself, driving back and forth to work. I’d have to look at this thing every single day, and it was a constant reminder of what I hadn’t finished.” He adds with a wry smile, “I think that helped me, but I don’t think it helped the belt much.”
Price has been a familiar figure in Volusia County high school football for nearly three decades. He began as the head coach at Warner Christian and steered the Eagles to 12 playoff appearances, including three straight trips to the Class 1A title games from 1999 to 2012. After a brief one-year departure from the county to coach Titusville in 2012, Price returned to lead Spruce Creek in 2013 and has remained at the helm ever since. Under his leadership, the Hawks have posted only one losing record in the Florida High School Athletic Association’s largest classification.
During his brief foray away from Volusia County, Price’s extracurricular routine—his commitment to mixed martial arts and, above all, Brazilian jiu-jitsu—was disrupted. He had trained at The Armory Daytona from 2007 until his departure in 2012, and while his primary focus was jiu-jitsu, he also practiced wrestling and Muay Thai, a kickboxing discipline that combines punches, kicks, knees, and elbows. The culmination of that era came with Price’s sole amateur MMA fight in March 2011, which the then-36-year-old defeated in 1 minute 30 seconds of the first round with a rear-naked choke.
Price’s ambitions for more MMA bouts lingered, but the move to Titusville placed him out of reach of The Armory, and his training gradually faded. Even though he returned a year later, the path he had started remained temporarily paused. “I loved jiu-jitsu so much. It was just when I moved back, I didn’t have it in me to dive back in, and I didn’t think I could dedicate the time, so I focused more on Creek’s work schedule,” Price explained. “On the personal side, there were issues here and there, and you just don’t feel like it.” The stubborn pull of that purple belt continued to hover as a reminder—a symbol of unfinished business that traveled with him in the truck for a full year, a quiet prompt to revisit a passion that had shaped much of his life but waited for him to find room for it again.