Correspondent file photo / Robert Hayes Warren JFK’s LaMarcus Provitt runs with the ball during a game vs. Liberty at Leopard Stadium on Sept. 5.

Six weeks ago, Warren JFK was about as low as low could get.

Up 25-6 in the first half against Marlington, the Eagles surrendered 19 unanswered points and an onside kick in the fourth quarter of what became their fifth consecutive loss to start the season.

It appeared that Kennedy, one year after a regional semifinal appearance, was destined to miss the postseason altogether in 2025.

“When you’re 0-5, that’s five straight weeks, 35 days without winning football games. It becomes exhausting and really weighs on you heavily,” Warren JFK head coach Damon Buente said.

Buente, in his third year as the Eagles’ head coach, knew something had to change.

“If you look at our position groups, we have changed personnel at every single position group outside of running back,” Buente said. “In terms of moving guys around, we’ve shuffled our offensive line, our defensive line, our linebackers, our secondary.”

Among the biggest personnel shifts was at quarterback, where Buente turned from pocket passer Logan Misocky to dual-threat LaMarcus Provitt, who began the season split out wide.

The explosive athleticism of Provitt, who made a playoff start for Kennedy last year due to injury, has come into his own as the full-time starter and simultaneously transformed the Eagles’ offense.

“He’s embraced and bought into being the starting quarterback, and our coaching staff has done a great job of putting him in positions to be successful,” Buente said. “At the end of the day, when you snap the ball to him at quarterback, he can score the football on any given play. He’s not dependent on different things, like when he was a wide receiver or if we put him at tailback or even kickoff return – people kick away from him.

“He has complete control of the game [at quarterback] because we snap to him every play. And our offense, the way that people believed in other great quarterbacks in the past, our offense believes that we can score at any time. So let’s just make sure that we block a guy on a guy and try to give this guy a lane or give Stephen Thomas, our veteran running back, give him a lane, and we can score.”

As the players on the field changed, so did the coaches’ game plans.

“We’ve simplified things probably nine or 10 times over,” Buente said.

As the changes took shape, so did the team.

After a month’s worth of losing, the Eagles rallied, winning game after game over the final month of the season as their once-remote playoff chances became increasingly more probable. But still, at 4-5 heading into Week 10, their spot in the postseason was anything but certain; with a loss to Division III Lutheran East, Kennedy, the tentative 12th and final seed in Division VII, could have fallen out of contention on the final day of the regular season.

“We go up there last week, and we’re playing a team that is bigger, faster, stronger than us on their senior night, and they’re not getting into the playoffs. So their seniors are playing with an electricity that you have to match,” Buente said.

Despite starting eight underclassmen on defense, the Eagles more than matched Lutheran East. And with four minutes to go, clinging to a 12-7 lead, the young Kennedy unit came up with a goal-line stand, its second in three games, to stop the Falcons from taking the lead. Soon after, JFK iced the game with another score.

With the win, Kennedy completed its remarkable turnaround, earned the eighth seed in the postseason and breathed a collective sigh of relief.

“Everything in life is better when you win. Music sounds better. Food tastes better. You sleep better,” Buente said. “Just to get those wins, it doesn’t really consume you the way that losing does.”

No. 8 Kennedy will host No. 9 Norwalk St. Paul (5-5) at Arrowhead Stadium in Girard instead of at Liberty at 7 p.m. today. Liberty will be playing its first-round game vs. Claymont tonight at Leopard Stadium, which the Eagles also use as their home field.

But to Buente and his team, because of their winless start, the postseason does not really begin tonight; it began a long time ago.

“We’ve been in the playoffs since Week 6,” Buente said. “Technically, we had to win every game, so the resiliency in our locker room and the resiliency amongst the assistant coaches has willed us to be in the position that we are in. … More so than anything, just to be in this position, it’s not X’s and O’s and it’s not one player. But the will of leaders in our locker room, in our coaches office, of these assistant coaches, that have pulled the kids out of it. I’m just so fortunate to coach some of these kids that put the program on their backs.”