NCHSAA champion Mike Brodowicz returning to coach football at Charlotte Catholic
One of the greatest Charlotte high school football coaches of a generation is returning to coach Charlotte Catholic.
The school announced Tuesday morning that Mike Brodowicz, 61, would again be on the sidelines next fall, resuming a 33-year coaching career.
“I come back to win. I make no bones about it,” Brodowicz said. “I’m not coming back to get a participation trophy. I think I have a formula where we can win a lot of games.”
Brodowicz will replace Keith Emery, a former Charlotte 49ers college assistant, who coached the Cougars for the past two seasons, going 17-8. Emery was hired after Matthew Reilly left after one season in 2023, when his team was 9-4.
In the past two years, the Cougars have dealt with incidents of bullying by football players and players transferring to other schools.
Catholic was 10-3 and a conference champion under Emery in 2024, going 6-0 in the old Southwestern 4A league of Mecklenburg County teams.
This season, the Cougars were 7-5 overall and 3-3 in the Union County-based Southern Carolinas 7A/8A conference. Catholic finished tied for third in league play.
“I want to thank coach Emery and his staff for the hard work and diligence,” Cougars athletic director Kevin Christmas said. “This was a decision made by (Catholic head of school Kurt) Telford, and he wanted to go in a different direction and that’s where he went. I’m excited to have Mike back. He knows the culture.”
Who is football coach Mike Brodowicz?
Brodowicz spent 20 years as defensive coordinator for former Charlotte Catholic head coach Jim Oddo. When Oddo retired in 2014, Brodowicz took over the team and took Catholic, by then a state power, to new heights.
In December 2022, Brodowicz resigned as head coach after nine seasons. In 2020, The Observer named him its high school football coach of the decade (2010-19).
The Observer also recently named Brodowicz as one of the best Charlotte high school coaches, in any sport, in the past 25 years, as well as one of the top football coaches of its Sweet 16 era (1984-2024) during a 40-year anniversary celebration.
In nine seasons at Catholic, Brodowicz was 110-15 with six state finals appearances and five state championships.
Since retiring from coaching, Brodowicz has been an assistant principal at Charlotte Catholic’s feeder middle school, Holy Trinity.
Catholic has not had a losing season since 1999.
So what’s next at Catholic?
Brodowicz plans to reassemble as much of his old staff as possible, and he will add his son who once played for him at Catholic.
And Brodowicz said he can’t wait to get started.
“Taking those three years off,” he said, “I was completely burned out. I started getting caught up, in those nine years and tremendous success I was fortunate to have with my coaching staff, I started looking at more of the outcomes. It kind of defined it for me. I was looking at the wins and it started putting more pressure on me, and it was just not fun for me.
“I said, ‘Now listen, (you’ve) had a great run. (You) don’t need this anymore. I felt it wasn’t good for my health. I was stressed and I gave it up.”
Time away, Brodowicz said, brought his old love back. Plus, his kids are grown up now. His daughter got married on Nov. 8.
“My life has been a little more simplified on the home front,” Brodowicz said. “And so a couple guys reached out to me that had been on my staff and said, ‘Hey do you ever want to get the band back together?’ I said, ‘That’s kind of interesting.’”
Brodowicz said Version 2.0 of him at Catholic will be a little different.
“I love the game,” he said. “I love getting back into it. I don’t have anything to prove anymore for myself personally, so I’m going to go back and just teach these kids a little more about the game, and it’s a good fit.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2025 at 11:16 AM.
