He Grew Up in LSU’s Backyard, But Elijah Haven Is Preparing to Take Over in Tuscaloosa

Tucked away in the shadow of LSU, the Dunham School may not feel that unique. It’s one of many small private Christian schools in East Baton Rouge, located at the end of a tree-lined street lined in an affluent neighborhood of the St. George suburb. Dunham could easily get lost in the football-crazed state of Louisiana, less than 10 miles from Tiger Stadium and situated among a number of other high school powerhouses. It’s smaller than many of its counterparts, with just 800 students ranging from pre-K through high school.

And yet one of those students looms a little larger than most.

The first thing that stands out about Elijah Haven is his size. Standing in the sweltering Louisiana sun at an August practice about a week before Dunham’s 2026 season opener, the five-star recruit is listed at 6' 5" and 220 pounds and dwarfs his receivers, his offensive lineman and most of his coaches. Of the 55 players on Dunham’s modestly sized roster, Haven quite literally stands alone. And not just because of his height.

HIGH HOPES: SI digital cover of Elijah Haven — Bryce France/Sports Illustrated

Haven is a consensus top-two quarterback in the class of 2027, ranking No. 7 among all positions in ESPN’s SC Next 300. He’s the Louisiana high school record holder for passing touchdowns, both in a single season and for his career. He’s committed to Alabama, notably a fierce rival of his hometown LSU, and positioned to become the next great quarterback to learn under the tutelage of Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer in Tuscaloosa.

Baton Rouge is a hotbed of high school and college football, but Dunham is no juggernaut, so having a highly touted recruit like Haven changes the calculus. When he led the 2025 team to a Louisiana Division III Select state title, it was just the second state football championship ever for the school. Haven makes the unlikely possible, even if the biggest games are still ahead of him.

“It’s high school football so sometimes we’re just worried about getting guys on the field at the right time,” Dunham coach Neil Weiner tells Sports Illustrated. “Elijah is competing for something much bigger.”

Kwame and Ebony Haven knew Elijah was different early on. Their eldest son has always been the tallest in his class, befriending kids his age who looked as though they might be four or five years younger. He’s also always had an inexhaustible motor, hence the family’s early desire to get him involved in sports to burn some energy.

Neither of his parents were major athletes themselves. Ebony serves as the executive director of the Louisiana Developmental Disabilities Council and has a master’s in public health from Tulane. Kwame is a pharmacist and grew up in Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta, and swam in high school. His biggest claim to fame was being in the Southwest Dekalb High School marching band, which played in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and at the 1996 Olympic Games and was a major inspiration for the 2002 movie Drumline. So when Elijah initially came to his parents at the age of six and expressed an interest in playing football, there was some hesitation. Concussion fears were heightened in the early 2010s and Kwame wasn’t sure about his son playing so early in life. But Elijah was determined—and already fascinated by quarterbacks.

“I watch a lot of sports but he would sit and watch with me and not be distracted at a young age,” says Kwame, who passed down his Falcons’ fandom to Elijah. “He would know every quarterback, their names, their numbers, what team they played for.”

“He remembered plays,” Ebony adds.

That early acumen made him gravitate to the most important position on the field. It helped him eventually become the backup quarterback at Dunham as an eighth grader, though his size and athleticism also meant Weiner and the coaching staff needed him to take snaps at defensive end and receiver. He was also a starter on Dunham’s varsity basketball team as a 14-year-old, and quickly blossomed into an all-state-caliber player by his freshman year.

But when it came to football, Elijah’s potential was largely untapped. The state did not allow sixth-graders to play football at public schools. This prompted the family to go private at Dunham, allowing Elijah to play as a middle schooler and not miss a year of development. Still, there was a question of what position he would play. And Elijah, already rather mature as a young teen, wasn’t the type of person or player lamenting a lack of playing time. He wanted to do whatever was best for the team, whether that was on the gridiron or on the hardwood.

“He always shares his success and is a team-first guy,” Dunham offensive coordinator Jeff Hand says. “Even way back when, as a sixth-grade basketball player, we could literally just feed the ball to him and he could score every basket if he wanted.

“He was always about the team … It was never just about him seeing how many points he could get.”

Over the years, that team-first mentality has turned Haven into the sort of leader every offensive coordinator dreams their quarterback can be. He exudes a quiet confidence on the field, not really saying much, but commanding through presence. During the August practice, the loudest exclamation he makes is when one of his passes falls incomplete, and he groans with frustration, seemingly at himself. Calls of “good throw” ring in from the sidelines, because it is—his receiver drops the pass.

Elijah Haven — Haven, who had 22 official offers from college programs, from committed to the Crimson Tide back in April. | Bryce France/Sports Illustrated

That’s not to say Haven isn’t afraid to step up and be that vocal leader when needed.

“I’m not hootin’ and hollerin’ all over the field all the time,” he says, “but when it’s time to get vocal and when guys need to be put in check, you gotta be that guy.”

Weiner can pinpoint the exact moment when his now senior quarterback went from untapped potential to something special. It’s hard for Dunham’s head football coach to forget.

As a freshman, Haven found himself in a quarterback battle. His competition, Logan Sorrel, was a grade older and a fellow dual-sport athlete, a star pitcher on Dunham’s baseball team with mid-90s velocity and has since signed with Kentucky baseball. The two young players split snaps 50-50 in a pair of preseason exhibitions.

Weiner and his staff determined that Elijah would start the first regular-season game and after the first quarter or first half they would re-evaluate. Haven had three touchdowns in the first quarter and commanded the offense in a way far beyond what a 14-year-old should be able to. At halftime, someone on the staff asked if the team should switch to Sorrel. “I was like, ‘Are you kidding?’” Weiner recalls.

Elijah Haven in the pocket at practice — Haven started all four year while at Dunham. | Bryce France/Sports Illustrated

Haven went on to play the whole game, racking up 534 total yards and seven touchdowns in a 52–46 loss.

“It was literally the best game that I’d ever had a quarterback play,” Weiner says.

Coaching is the family business for Weiner, whose father, Dale, was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 2025 alongside LSU legends Nick Saban and Andrew Whitworth. Dale also coached at Dunham but rose to prominence with Catholic High School, turning the Baton Rouge–area school into a powerhouse with players such as star Florida State running backs Warrick Dunn and Travis Minor. Neil has coached his fair share of talented players too, including former first-round pick and now Texans cornerback Derrick Stingley Jr., whose name is prominently displayed on a new turf practice field at Dunham.

But no player has been quite like Haven.

Since that fateful freshman start, Haven has added touchdown after touchdown—and accolade after accolade. He threw for 3,931 yards and scored 73 total touchdowns in 14 games as a junior, setting the single-season state record with 62 passing touchdowns en route to Dunham’s first state title since 2004. The season elevated his national profile as he earned a consensus five-star designation, as well as the No. 1 QB spot in the SC Next 300 and the No. 2 QB ranking in the class of ’27 from 247Sports. He was also named the 2025 Louisiana Gatorade Player of the Year.

Haven played in the first two games of his senior season, but an injury forced him to miss four games over a month. But he picked up right where he left off when he returned in mid-October and became Louisiana’s all-time passing touchdowns leader with his 146th touchdown on Oct. 23.

Elijah Haven is putting on an absolute show in the first half for Dunham
The 5-star reigning Louisiana Gatorade POY has thrown 3 TD passes to 3 different receivers, has rushed for a TD and set up another with a great run.
The Alabama commit back healthy and then some… pic.twitter.com/GedTQnUd2C
— Eric Richey (@EricRicheyVSN) October 24, 2026

The record is a testament to the kind of style Haven plays: a passing quarterback who can run, rather than a run-first quarterback. That said, Hand also calls Haven his best running back and is quick to compare him to players like Cam Newton and Josh Allen. When asked what Haven allows him to do on offense that he didn’t think would be possible otherwise, Hand’s answer is easy: “not worry about pass protection.”

“I tell the boys, if you give him three seconds, if we keep him clean, we got a shot,” Dunham offensive line coach Greyson Augustus chimes in.

That said, there’s still plenty that Haven acknowledges he can improve upon, and some of that will come just from being solely focused on football. He opted to forego his senior basketball season to enroll early at Alabama, a decision he calls “bittersweet.” But in his early high school years, he wasn’t able to throw much in the offseason, oftentimes hardly touching a football until March.

“I think he’s always had the mindset like, ‘During football season I’m a football player, [and during] basketball season I’m a basketball player,’” Weiner explains.

That started to change the winter after Haven’s sophomore season, following a particularly gutting loss in the state championship game. By that point, Haven had gotten plenty of attention on the recruiting trail and he wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass him by. A few weeks after the football season ended, while in the midst of basketball season, he woke up at 5:30 a.m. two days a week to throw with receivers and watch film with his coaches.

Still, even Haven recognizes he has work to do to iron out his throwing mechanics. He works with a pair of quarterback development groups: QB County in Mobile, Ala., and QB Summit in Southern California, with former NFL quarterback Jordan Palmer, who has privately coached the likes of Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and Joe Burrow. This past May, he made the Elite 11 Finals—a testament to how far he’s come while focusing only on football for the past 20 months.

“He’s a game-day guy,” Hand emphasizes. “He may go to a camp and somebody may show a little bit better here and there in a certain area, but put him on the field and try to tackle him and try to contain him. Good luck.”

Ebony and Kwame admit they didn’t know how to navigate the recruiting landscape. As Elijah shot up recruiting boards across the country, schools came calling—22 with official offers that Elijah announced publicly. “It’s like living a new experience through his eyes,” Ebony says.

“We don’t know what we don’t know,” Kwame adds. “But we do know our son.”

Kwame is a pharmacist by trade, meticulous with details and well-versed in Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. So it’s only natural that he crafted a lengthy spreadsheet to help him and his son sort through all of the necessary information. Ebony chuckles as Kwame scrolls through more than a dozen columns that range from the football-focused (key coaching staff members, type of offense) and the finance-focused (NIL and revenue share info, coaching contracts and hot seat information), to the future-focused (famous QB alums, how many players have been drafted in the past decade). The ever-growing sheet, which started to get less detailed as Elijah narrowed down his options, also listed rankings for academic pursuits Elijah was interested in: engineering, then sports medicine, then finance.

There were plenty of options. At one point Ebony thought Florida was the front-runner, but then Billy Napier was fired in October 2025, muddying the waters and leading to uncertainty about what was next in Gainesville. Georgia was in the mix as well, making a late push as the Bulldogs looked for Gunner Stockton’s successor.

And still, one school always stayed near the top of Kwame’s spreadsheet: Alabama.

The Crimson Tide didn’t offer Elijah until June of 2025, well after other top-tier SEC schools had made their interest known. But Alabama did roll out the red carpet for the Havens when they visited Tuscaloosa earlier that month. Not only did DeBoer’s staff focus on the football elements, but it also showed Kwame and Ebony the kind of support the school would give the first child they sent off to college. Ebony remembers specifically getting introduced to the team chaplain, the only such school to do so and something that really made an impression on a family guided by its Christian faith.

A portrait of Elijah Haven and his family — Elijah comes from a close family, which includes (counterclockwise) his mother, Ebony; brother, Emmanuel; sister, Edyn; and father, Kwame. | Bryce France/Sports Illustrated

“I want him to develop into a great football player but also a great man,” Ebony says.

“They did everything first class,” Kwame says of Alabama. “And what I tell people is all I want you to do is shoot me straight.”

That’s exactly what DeBoer and the Tide continued to do, even as the ever-shifting world of college football caused a wave if staff changes. Nick Sheridan, DeBoer’s co-OC and quarterbacks coach who was pivotal in Haven’s recruitment, took the offensive coordinator job at Michigan State this past offseason. But Sheridan called Kwame personally and got on the phone with the Havens and new Alabama QBs coach Bryan Ellis to ensure that Elijah was in good hands.

“Bama was just the most consistent in my recruiting process,” Elijah says. “They had a couple coaching changes within the offensive room and the quarterback room, but Coach Ellis stepped in right away. And it seemed like there was no drop off. So that definitely went a long way for me.”

It’s no easy task to say you’re going to an archrival when you’re from LSU country, but the situation in which Elijah found himself was a bit more complicated than that. Weiner, an LSU alum himself, avoided pushing Haven in any specific direction. Still, he had a relationship with former Tigers QBs coach Joe Sloan, who headed up Haven’s recruitment, and maintains that Haven had real interest in his hometown school. One morning September 2025, however, Sloan called Weiner to give him a heads up: LSU was going to offer Peyton “Pop” Houston, another in-state quarterback recruit from Shreveport. That left Elijah without a real spot at the school seven miles from his house.

Elijah Haven drops back for a pass at practice — “Bama was just the most consistent in my recruiting process,” Elijah says. “They had a couple coaching changes ... but Coach Ellis stepped in right away. And it seemed like there was no drop off.” | Bryce France/Sports Illustrated

“There’s a part of me that would hate for a kid that’s grown up in the Baton Rouge area loving LSU, that goes to LSU and then the moment [fans] can, they turn their back on him,” Weiner says. “So there’s a part of me that’s like, go somewhere else. That’s fine with me.

“But at the same time, I love him and he’s awesome. And I love LSU, so I would have loved seeing him run out there in Tiger Stadium and playing. But I’m really excited for him.”

So how will Weiner react to seeing his four-year starting quarterback play against the college he graduated from?

“I’ll be pulling for Elijah, 100%,” Weiner says. “If LSU’s got a chance to make the College Football Playoff and they need that win, I’m gonna be pulling for the Tigers to pull it off.”

Haven just turned 18 in October and will arrive on campus in Tuscaloosa as an early enrollee this January, a common practice for recruits in today’s age of college football. He’ll graduate high school in December, something that’s critically important to his mom. Though excited for the next step of his life and eager to see him live somewhere outside of the Baton Rouge suburbs, his parents, like any who send their first kid off to college, are struck by his rapidly approaching departure.

“He just likes being home with his family and spending time,” Ebony says. “And we’re definitely trying to enjoy every minute of that because it’s winding down.”

Though he may also be a burgeoning star on the football field, Elijah is still just a big brother. As he sits in his locker getting set up for a photoshoot, his younger brother Emmanuel, or “Manny” as Elijah calls him, walks in with a gift. Inside is a new pair of cleats from EA Sports, one of the many endorsement deals Elijah has signed in recent months. He takes out the size 15 shoes and tries them on, but as he begins lacing them, Ebony prods him. “He still ties his shoes with the double bunny ears,” she laughs.

It’s the sort of joke that constantly flies around the tight-knit Haven family with Elijah’s younger sister Edyn rounding out the quintet. Manny is a fan of the cleats: “You should wear those if you go to the Superdome again,” he says, referring to the home of the New Orleans Saints, where Dunham won its 2025 state championship. Elijah is quick to correct him: “If? You mean when.”

A repeat state title may be a tough task for Dunham, which took three early losses in 2026, in part due to Haven’s injury. When he returned, the team got back on track, picking up a trio of dominant wins in mid-to-late October to gain some momentum with the postseason on the horizon.

That state championship is of course on Haven’s mind, but it’s difficult not to look at what’s down the road. Just as his coach said: Elijah is playing for much more than a second state title. There’s a long way to go, but, much like his rapid rise to five-star recruit, it could come all at once.

Haven’s dreams aren’t dissimilar from himself: towering. And where do they end? Ideally the NFL.

“I want to dream big. I want to win a Heisman, and win a Super Bowl,” he says. “So I dream big, and create goals for myself and then work hard to go get ’em.”

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