Sports
Joe Powel Takes Over As New Carroll Football Coach
The Patriots chose an old rival to take over for the retired Dan Bielli.
has tapped an old nemesis to take over as the new head football coach—Joe Powel, who directed Archbishop Wood to a pair of Catholic League Blue Division titles in the mid-2000s.
Powel, who coached the previous four years at Upper Merion, takes over for Dan Bielli, who retired after 12 seasons this past spring. Powel, a Haverford resident, was introduced formally as the new Patriots coach at a Carroll function Saturday night.
Powel's Wood teams frequently banged heads with Carroll for supremacy in the Catholic League Blue Division.
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“Joe won two Catholic titles at Wood; he has experience in the Catholic League and knows the Catholic League and he seems focused on what he wants to do,” said Carroll President Father Ed Casey. “We’re thrilled to have him. We interviewed a number of viable candidates and everyone was on the same page with Joe, he was the obvious choice.”
Powel is an accountant, Casey pointed out, and he’s able to adjust his schedule to commit time to the program. The commute will also be much easier, which was a reason why he left Wood, going back and forth from Warminster to Haverford.
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“It was important for us to see that Joe very good with Catholic identity,” Casey said. “On Monday, he met with the players for the first time in one of our lecture rooms and I got a chance to sit in. He spoke about God, family, school and football, in that order. You have to like that. But he’s also here to win.”
Carroll finished 4-6 overall last year. The Patriots won their first four games, then proceeded to lose their last six.
While Powel was at Wood, from 2004 to ‘06, his teams went 27-9 overall and 19-3 in the Catholic League. Under Powel, Wood won consecutive Catholic Blue titles in 2004 and 2005, and reached the 2006 final.
At Upper Merion, he was 11-29 overall, going 0-10 last year and a combined 3-16 his last two years there.
“This is a much more comfortable environment we feel for Joe here,” Casey said. “He knows the Catholic League and what he needs to do to win. We live in an open-enrollment environment and we want to make it an attractive place for student life and kids interested in playing football at Carroll. Joe will help us in that process.”
