When Maryland assistant football coach Andre Powell decided to leave the Terps for Pittsburgh last week, the move also meant a big loss for area girls basketball.
Seton Keough coach Jody Powell will relocate to Pittsburgh with her husband and their children after this season is over.
Jody Powell has kept the Gators competitive in the Interscholastic Athletic Association of Maryland A Conference over the past four years through a number of injuries and transfers. She's never had the same lineup two years in a row, but with a starting five that includes four sophomores and a junior, she has the Gators 10-5 and ranked No. 11 in the Baltimore Sun poll.
Last week, however, was a rough one for the coach and the team.
They opened the week with a 46-44 overtime loss to No. 6 St. Frances in which they missed 15 free throws. Wednesday, they fell to No. 1 Roland Park 70-51. Thursday, Powell had to tell her players that she would be leaving at the end of the season.
"Ideally, I would have been able to wait another month to tell them, so they could continue to play as hard as they're playing, but with the word on social media, before he even got the job, the phone was blowing up," she said. "That was Wednesday and we were about to play Roland Park. He was on the plane and hadn't even accepted the position and we hadn't even told our own children. I had to tell my team the very next day, because I didn't want them to hear it from anyone else."
The Gators then played St. Vincent Pallotti on Friday, pulling out an overtime win although Powell said they were still so emotional that they were "like a bunch of zombies out there moving around." By Saturday, however, the girls had bounced back strong to beat North Point, a Class 4A state finalist last season, 50-38, at the Public vs. Private Challenge at McDonogh.
"The opportunity to play North Point was the best thing that could have happened to us, to just be able to put a lot of stuff behind us, kind of to work through it," she said. "I've been talking with them more and more saying, 'We have unfinished business here. Let's stop worrying about next year. Let's stop worrying about transferring. Let's stop worrying about any of this and let's try to finish what we started, because you don't have to wait until you're seniors. You're good now. Let's try to do whatever we can do and make our memories now.'"
Seton Keough athletic director Josiah LaTona, echoing the feelings of many of Powell's colleagues in the IAAM, said he is sorry to see her go.
"She's a tremendous coach," Latona said. "She's done great with these girls. You watch the tenacity with which our girls play and that's a direct reflection of Coach Jody's intensity and passion that comes out on the floor. We're four years into her being here and ... she's just hitting her stride and life happens. This is the best move for her family, but we're certainly going to miss her here."
Powell and LaTona said she will be involved in the selection process for a new coach, which won't begin until the season ends in about a month.
"It's important to me to be involved in the selection process," Powell said, "because I feel like I know this group of kids really well. I'm very attached to them and I want them to reach their full potential."
For the Powells, moving every four or five years is something they've learned to live with. Before arriving in Maryland in 2011, they had lived in New York, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina as Andre Powell took assistant coaching positions at Army, Virginia, North Carolina and Clemson.
"People often compare it to being a military family," said Jody Powell, who met her husband 21 years ago when she was an assistant basketball coach and he was an assistant football coach at Rhode Island.
"We've actually been lucky, because prior to coming to Maryland, we had averaged five years at every place we had been and that's really unheard of. I know some football families that have moved so much they're kids have been at different schools every year for four or five years. You have the issue that your team's not doing well and then potentially your head coach gets fired and everybody's let go or you do well and someone lures you away. Every November, every Thanksgiving, our whole family starts to have anxiety attacks because we have to wait until the end of January to find out if we get to stay again."
Moving to Pittsburgh, where Andre Powell will be the Panthers' special teams coordinator and running backs coach, Jody Powell will be going home. That makes the move a lot easier for her and her three children who have a lot of family there.
She said she would like to coach again and still has many connections in the area.
Although a decision on Powell's successor won't be made right away, LaTona said he will accept resumes at jlatona@setonkeough.com.