Dave Havern was once part of a great turnaround.

In 1970, the Pitt football team trailed West Virginia, 35-8, at halftime, but Havern quarterbacked a great comeback in the second half and Pitt won, 36-35.

Now he's commanding a turnaround of a high school football program.

Havern is in his fifth season as coach at Shady Side Academy. The school installed lights at its field this year and the team is shining brightly under Havern. The Indians finished the regular season 9-0 and earned the No. 3 seed for the WPIAL Class AA playoffs. This comes after a 9-2 season in 2007.

It's quite the turnaround story for Havern and his staff. Before Havern took over, Shady Side Academy was 6-22 in the three previous seasons. In Havern's first season (2004), he had only 18 players and only 23 the second year.

Now he has 35 -- and a perfect record.

"I'd be lying if I told you I didn't have some second thoughts in that first year or so," he said. "But two things kept me going. First, I have a tremendous group of assistant coaches and four of them are Shady Side graduates. Secondly, I knew these kids wouldn't quit. I was an assistant for two years before I took over and I never saw a kid quit or take a day off."

The funny thing is, when Havern took a job in fund-raising at Shady Side Academy in 2001, coaching was the furthest thing from his mind. He had been quarterbacks coach at Central Catholic and one of his pupils was Marc Bulger, an NFL starter for the St. Louis Rams and former star at West Virginia.

"When I came here [to Shady Side], I thought it was time to grow up and I thought I was done with coaching," Havern said with a laugh.

But he got talked into becoming an assistant coach at Shady Side in 2002. When the school in Fox Chapel decided not to bring back John Cappa as coach after the 2003 season, it turned to Havern.

He was 2-7 and 3-6 his first two seasons. So how did Havern, 59, get the program turned around? There is a "simple" explanation.

"I just tried to instill basic fundamentals in the entire program from varsity through middle school," Havern said. "If I would've gotten this job 10-15 years ago, I would've been drawing up X's and O's, trying to trick people and going about it all the wrong way. But that wasn't the way to get it done.

"I know now fundamentals and technique are the keys to everything. We didn't tackle very well when I took the job, so we worked on just that. We showed the receivers how to put their feet. We said this is how the running backs line up all the time. These are our blocking rules.

"I just tried to pay attention to detail and every year we got better. Then it got to the point where the competitive players were able to start doing other stuff, like changing plays at the line of scrimmage."

And changing the losing ways.

The Class AA playoff field is deep with talented teams. Thirteen of the 16 teams have two losses or fewer.

But Shady Side's defense might be able to keep the Indians in the game against anyone. Shady Side has allowed only 34 points, and 24 came in one game against Burrell. The Indians have shut out six teams and held eight of nine opponents to seven points or fewer.

"Please, this isn't me doing this," Havern said. "My defensive coordinator [Dave Szlachetka] is the best defensive guy I've been around. I might have had a plan and a vision but these assistant coaches and kids have done it. And it wasn't a remarkable plan. It was really just Football 101."

There will be one fewer high school game at Heinz Field this fall. The City League football championship will be played Nov. 8 at Cupples Stadium on the South Side.

Since Heinz Field opened in 2001, the City League and WPIAL football championships have been played at Heinz Field. But Pitt plays Louisville there Nov. 8 and the Steelers play host to Indianapolis Nov. 9. The City League has played the championship game at Heinz Field sometimes on a Thursday, but not this year.

"The dates just didn't work out for us this year," City League athletic director Mike Gavlik. "We would go back next year, if it's available."

All four WPIAL championships will be played at Heinz Field Nov. 22.

A Monday story in One of America's Great Newspapers pointed out how a handful of freshmen were having big impacts around the WPIAL. But there are a few more than originally mentioned.

Trey Hall, a ninth-grade running back at New Brighton, went over 1,000 yards rushing last week. That means three freshmen have reached 1,000 yards. The other two are Hopewell's Rushell Shell and Charleroi's Quentin Briggs.

Also, Burgettstown freshman quarterback Dylan Bongiorni went over 1,000 yards passing last week.

Any WPIAL team that does not make the playoffs can play a 10th game against an opponent of their choosing. This is the way it has been since the league went to a nine-game, regular-season schedule. But the number of teams playing a 10th game has dwindled drastically in the past few years.

This season, only 15 WPIAL schools have elected to play a 10th game. Two City League teams (Peabody and Oliver) also are playing a 10th game against WPIAL schools.

That means 44 WPIAL schools elected to call it a season after last week.

It's hard to believe any WPIAL team fell further with one loss than Keystone Oaks.

Keystone Oaks headed into the final week against Seton-LaSalle with an 8-0 record. A win would have given the Eagles one of the top five seeds in Class AA. But the Eagles lost to Seton-LaSalle, 20-0, and the defeat put Keystone Oaks in a three-way tie with Sto-Rox and Seton-LaSalle for the Century Conference title.

Keystone Oaks lost out on tiebreakers and dropped to the third-place team in the conference. That put the Eagles on the road for the first round of the playoffs against a tough Ford City team (8-1).

The start of the NCAA's week-long early signing period for basketball is only 13 days away. Most likely, there will be only one WPIAL or City League boys' senior player sign with a Division I school. McKeesport 7-footer Zeke Marshall made a verbal commitment to the University of Akron in the spring and plans to sign with the Zips.

The NCAA spring signing period begins in April. Maybe another WPIAL or City League senior will have a big season and draw some Division I interest. But it's entirely possible that Marshall will remain the only Division I player from the class of 2009.

You would think that maybe after, say, 20 receptions, the defense might have tried double coverage.

J.D. Felice, a 5-foot-10 receiver at Rose Bud High in Arkansas, caught 24 passes in a game last week for a national-record 421 yards. But his team lost to England, 64-55.