For football Head Coach Bill Zwaan the PSAC East Championship was a realistic and achievable title for the 2004 Golden Rams. Coach Zwaan, a 1979 graduate of the University of Delaware, has taken his Rams to the next level. Coach Zwaan knows a little bit about winning national titles already. Zwaan was a standout quarterback at the University of Delaware and led the Blue Hens to the 1974 NCAA Division II National Championship game as a junior. Coach Zwaan isn’t surprised at the success of his team, although he attributes much of it to a certain amount of luck. “I thought we had a chance to win the PSAC East Championship and make the NCAA Playoffs. I thought we had a very good football team at the beginning of the year, but you need a lot of things to go right to get to the Final Four. I guess it has gone well for us so far.” Zwaan came to West Chester after a six-year ride as head coach of the Division III powerhouse, Widener College. At Widener, Zwaan led the Pioneers to their third consecutive Middle Atlantic Conference Championship and owns the all-time highest winning percentage at Widener at .794, while his record ranks seventh among active NCAA Division III head coaches with at least five years of head coaching experience.From his success at Widener, Coach Zwaan came to West Chester with full confidence. “I felt confident that what I was doing at Widener would carry over at West Chester… While I was at Widener University we had two teams that went deep into the playoffs, so I did have some experience with coaching good teams before this year.”
West Chester hopes that under the guidance of Coach Zwaan, the Golden Rams will enjoy this kind of success on a regular basis. He has led his 2004 team to a record of 11-4,while leading the Rams to an 8-3 record last year during his first year as head coach.
Zwaan has high aspirations for the Golden Rams saying that: “I hope we keep the program playing at this level, go to the NCAA Playoffs regularly and make a run at the national championship once in a while.