Bishop McDevitt makes Watkins new head coach

Bishop McDevitt had to deal with a delicate situation went it looked to replace long-time head coach Pat Manzi.

Manzi retired as the headman of the Royal Lancer program after a 34-year coaching tenure. Manzi was also coming off one of his more successful seasons in recent history after McDevitt won the District 12-A championship and advanced the PIAA Class A quarterfinals.

Replacing a coach who spent the better part of three decades at the head of a program, that returns a lot of talent off a successful team made hiring the successor that much more important.

The Lancers made the shrewd choice by looking in house. Mike Watkins has been the defensive coordinator of McDevitt since 2014 but his ties to the McDevitt program and community runs much deeper.

“I was part of the committee,” Manzi said. “It was the president, the principal, the assistant principal and myself. We interviewed several candidates and we had some very good interviews but we felt that Mike was the best candidate for the job.”

The new lead dog for the Lancers played for Manzi back in the late 90s as did his brothers and both of Watkins’ parents are also alums of McDevitt.

“I pretty much just went in and explained to them why I was the right guy for the position and went from there,” Watkins said. “My family has been a part of McDevitt for a long time. My father played there, me and all my brothers played there so there’s something really special about McDevitt for us.”

Besides running the Lancer defense for the last three seasons, other notable experience for Watkins includes being a Defensive Coordinator with Princeton University, Athlete Outreach Coordinator and Sports Performance coach at Summit Sports Training Center, and Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach at St. Joseph’s University.

“I’ve never really had a break from football,” Watkins said. “I went right from playing from when I was a kid, through high school, through college and got right into coaching.”

Watkins has only had the job for a week so he is still in the process of filling out his staff though he noted most of the staff would stay intact. While the staff among other things has still yet to be determined Watkins is excited to get to work and sees a lot of potential in what next year’s team can be.

“I think playing 14 games last year certainly helped some of our young guys grow,” Watkins said. “We graduate nine guys, eight of them are starters but we certainly have up front some returners that we got high expectations for.”