In the past two seasons, the Seton-LaSalle High School girls' basketball team has reached the WPIAL championship game only to leave with silver medals.

The Rebels' new coach can relate.

The last WPIAL game Dennis Squeglia coached was the 2008 WPIAL Class AAAA title game. He walked off the A.J. Palumbo Center court with a runner-up medal as well.

"We both reached the biggest stage in the WPIAL," Squeglia said. "There is a heck of a lot of work to do to get back there. We just need to take it one day at a time."

Squeglia led Peters Township to the WPIAL Class AAAA title game in 2008. It was his fourth and final season at the school. He cited a lack of support from parents and the administration for resigning but always knew he would get back into coaching once the right job opened up.

"When I left Peters, I knew I wasn't done," Squeglia said. "I waited for the right opportunity. I was thrilled that the job opened. To get this program is a gift."

He takes over for Bryan Bennett, who helped make the Rebels a perennial contender in Class AA.

Squeglia has been conducting open gyms throughout the summer and has met most of his team.

"They are a very hard-working group of kids," Squeglia said. "They are very driven and very motivated. They took to my style on the first day, and I was very pleased with how they responded."

The Rebels graduated two starters from last season, including Niagara University recruit Katie Gattuso, but the team will return six seniors. Squeglia regularly attended WPIAL games around the area. He got to see Seton-LaSalle in action during the regular season and playoffs last year.

"I know the style they like to play," Squeglia said. "Getting familiar with that conference will be a challenge."

The Rebels section features Bishop Canevin, South Fayette and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. A tough section is nothing new to Squeglia, who coached in the same section as Class AAAA powers Mt. Lebanon, Bethel Park and Upper St. Clair while he was at Peters.

Something Squeglia will have to get used to is coaching at a Catholic high school that does not benefit from a direct feeder system.

"That is going to be the big challenge, understanding the diocesan style," Squeglia said.

Squeglia is a 1982 graduate of Union High School. He lives in Peters Township and is a middle school physical education teacher at Harrison Middle School in the Baldwin-Whitehall School District. While he is no longer coaching in the largest classification, he still wants to see a steady diet of Class AAAA competition.

"Five kids in Double-A can go into a Quad-A gym and win games," Squeglia said.

While Squeglia has most of his team together in the summer for open gyms, he will lose most of them in the fall to other sports such as soccer and volleyball. He said he encourages his players to play multiple sports as even he has experience in several sports. Football, not basketball, was his first coaching gig. He was an assistant football coach at New Castle and later served as an assistant at Baldwin under Don Yannessa.

"We are going to schedule our open gyms and our conditioning time to meet all the needs of the volleyball and soccer kids," Squeglia said.

"They have three jobs, academics, worrying about their sport in season and then worrying about their sport not in season."

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