Kennedy senior Trevor Heitland has joined an exclusive club this season.

In fact, he's the only member.

Heitland is the only Class 4A football player in the state who's rushed for more than 700 yards and caught passes for more than 500 yards this season.

That makes him the only 700/500 man among all the big-school players in those two departments.

Basketball has players who get double-doubles in points and rebounds. Baseball has 20/20 players who hit 20 homers and steal 20 bases. And Class 4A football has Heitland.

"It's pretty impressive. I'm happy for him, because he's a tailback at heart," Kennedy Coach Tim Lewis said Monday after practice.

"If he had his choice, he'd carry the ball 30 times a game and probably would be well over 1,000 yards by now, but that's not what we needed."

Kennedy has two good tailbacks with Heitland and Alex Hillyer, but Lewis did not want to rotate them during games. He wanted to get both players on the field and decided to make Heitland a combo runner/receiver to help the team.

"He's assumed his role. I think he's done a great job and he's had a tremendous attitude throughout the whole season," Lewis said.

Heitland has rushed 116 times for 715 yards and 12 touchdowns, and he's caught 29 passes for 541 yards and five TDs for a total package of 1,256 yards and 17 touchdowns.

He ran for 929 yards and 10 touchdowns last season, but did not catch a single pass in 2010. This combo job is new.

"At the beginning I wasn't sure how it was going to work out," he said. "But as I've worked on it and gotten it going, I've really started to like it."

Heitland will get a chance to add to his totals Wednesday night when the Cougars (5-4) open the Class 4A playoffs against Iowa City High (7-2) at Bates Field in Iowa City.

The Little Hawks defeated Kennedy, 34-13, in the fifth game of the season, but the Cougars are hoping for a better outcome in the rematch.

"We played them tough in the first half. It was 6-zero," Heitland recalled. "Our offense moved the ball somewhat well and our defense was playing great. We just have to make sure we play four quarters instead of two.

"Our offense is clicking a lot better than I think it was earlier in the season," he added.

Heitland struggled against Iowa City High in the first meeting, rushing six times for 33 yards and catching three passes for 37 yards. He's been hot since then, however, collecting more than 100 all-purpose yards in four straight games and more than 200 all-purpose yards in two of them.

He rushed 16 times for 110 yards and caught two passes for 94 yards against Waterloo West, then rushed 13 times for 164 yards and caught six passes for 84 yards against Dubuque Wahlert in the last two games of the year. Kennedy won them both.

Iowa City High was riding a long unbeaten streak in Mississippi Valley Conference games when Kennedy played the Little Hawks the first time, but City High has lost a pair of games since then to Cedar Rapids Washington and Linn-Mar.

Their aura of invincibility has been dented.

"It does help, just knowing they can be beat and they're not some invincible team that no one can beat," Heitland said. "I think it does help our attitude level all-around."

Lewis agrees.

"You can use that as motivation and let the kids know they are beatable. They've been beaten twice this year," he said. "And I think both of those teams exposed some of their weaknesses. We've been able to take a look at that."

Kennedy enters the postseason with the same 5-4 record it had a year ago, rallying both years after slow starts. The Cougars got hot in the playoffs last year and won two games, and they'd like to get on a postseason roll again this time.

"There's definite similarities with how we had a slow start and ended with the same record," Heitland said. "But I think this year our offense is clicking a little better than our offense last year.

"We're more multiple, able to pass the ball and run the ball, which is helping," he said.

This year, the Cougars have a 700/500 man to help carry the load.