Sacred Heart University head women’s basketball coach Ed Swanson announced that Kelly Killion and Kara Powell will join his coaching staff as assistant coaches for the 2012-13 season. In addition, Jen Wedo, who is beginning her third season on the Pioneers bench, has been promoted as the program’s top assistant coach.

Killion spent the last two seasons working as an assistant coach on head coach Mike McLaughlin’s staff at the University of Pennsylvania. During her first season, Killion helped lead the Quakers to the largest single-season turnaround in program history and earned the program’s first Big 5 win in six years. In 2011-12, the Quakers finished with their highest win total in seven years. During her tenure with the Quakers, Killion worked primarily with the guards and in 2010-11, she helped rookie guard Alyssa Baron became the first freshman in Ivy history to lead the league in scoring and became just the second player in school history to earn Ivy League and Big 5 Rookie of the Year honors.

Prior to her coaching stint at Penn, Killion was an assistant coach for the Camden Catholic High School women’s basketball team from 2008-10. During that time, she also served as head coach of the Tri-State Tar Heels AAU team in 2009.

Powell begins her coaching career with the Pioneers after a stand-out playing career at the University of Richmond. She earned her degree in Rhetoric and Communications Studies from Richmond in May of 2010 as a Dean’s List student-athlete. She captained the Spiders during the 2007-08 season and finished 10th in the Richmond record books in career assists. While at Agawam High School, Powell was named the Massachusetts Player of the Year.

After graduating, Powell spent the summer of 2010 as the Basketball Operations Intern with the New York Knicks of the National Basketball Association. She assisted the organization’s basketball operations staff with the day to day duties as well as coordinating projects and research with the team’s scouting department. She also assisted with coordinating team travel and working with the video department on daily projects. She also worked for DKC Public Relations in New York City as a publicity assistant in 2011 and 2012.

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