Longtime Mount Alvernia High School girls' basketball coach De Porucznik is retiring after almost five decades at the Millvale private girls' school.

Porucznik, who began teaching and coaching at the school in 1963, won one PIAA championship, six WPIAL championships and two Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese girls' titles, which predate the WPIAL.

Known to many as "Coach De," Porucznik, who never liked media attention, could not be reached for comment. She will stay on as the school's athletic director.

Porucznik did not keep records of her coaching wins and losses or her championships, but one of her former assistants, Bill Barker, said she won between 800 and 1,000 games.

"She'll never say, though, because numbers aren't important to her," Barker said.

Former Vincentian coach Orie Gentile will take over as Mount Alvernia's girls' basketball coach.

"How can you fill her shoes?" Gentile asked. "I'm just hoping I can go in and do a good job and keep the team as successful as it has been."

Mount Alvernia's 1983 team won the school's only PIAA title, finishing the season 34-0. Her 2008 team, the last to win a WPIAL championship, lost in the PIAA final to Marian Catholic.

One former player and several former assistant coaches praised Porucznik, whose career began before Title IX was enacted. Girls' basketball was available mainly in the Catholic girls' high schools and academies that dotted Western Pennsylvania in the 1960s.

"She's always put the players and assistants ahead of herself," Barker said. "While she never liked being in the limelight, she always was about the success of the team. She knew how to find the right words to motivate the players and the coaches."

Don Favero, who assisted Porucznik from 2002-07 and now is the principal and girls' basketball coach at Greensburg Central Catholic, said he was a different person after the five years he spent on Porucznik's staff.

"She's a wonderful woman and has the humility of a saint," he said. "We won more than 100 games when I was there, but the school and Coach De had a remarkable spirituality that changed me forever. She said she could care less about her record; she was focused on winning the next game. It will be a great loss for Mount Alvernia, but it's her way."

Larry McCabe, another Mount Alvernia assistant from 1980-2009, said he broached the subject of retirement with Porucznik several years ago.

"I said the time might be coming where we'd have to pass the torch," he said. "I knew it would happen some day, but she just didn't want it to happen then. She's given everything she's had to this school as a physical education teacher, coach and athletic director. She loved doing all of it."

Karen Hall, who was a starting guard for Porucznik on the 1983 state championship team, will join Mount Alvernia's staff as an assistant athletic director.

"Losing wasn't in our vocabulary," Hall said of the championship season. "The coaches prepared us for the game. We executed and the result was a win. "

Hall said Porucznik built the program "brick by brick."

"I played for a legend," she said, "and her legacy is the banners hanging in that gym and the players she coached."

Mike White's "High School Sports Edition" videos are featured exclusively on PG+, a members-only web site from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.