PCM High School has a new football offensive coordinator, Zack Woods, and he is making a big impact on the football program this season. Woods previously coached at Williamsburg for 16 years.

“So I turned 40, and I asked myself, what if I just went to go coach with some of my best friends?” He asked himself.

Coach Greg Bonnett and Coach Jeff Shannon were really good friends previous to Woods coming to PCM. While coaching at Williamsburg, Woods had won a lot of games and reached the state finals and semifinals multiple times, plus Williamsburg is currently ranked top 5 in 2A. But the connection to PCM and the coaches here just drew him closer.

“But I just thought to myself, why not just go coach at PCM,” Woods explained.

 Coach Woods has had a strong connection with a lot of the players from day one. But obviously this is a very different environment with different players and coaches and that takes some adapting.

“When you’re dug into something, you think that everything is normal, this place is not normal, just like how Williamsburg is a different outfit too,” he explained. “When I come here, it’s like I’m transported into the 90s.” 

 So far, being different has been alright with him because he’s been enjoying himself and loves coming to practice and coaching everyday. But when he broke it down to one player he talked a lot about the team’s center, Jacob Burns.

“It’s been awesome getting to know Burnsy, I stinkin love Burnsy, he’s just an enigma and you never know what’s going on in his head.”

 But he can connect with everyone on a personal level and a coach-player level.

“I mean you got Donny and the whole outfit like they’re just absolute weirdos,” he said.

Something that people outside the football program don’t know about Coach Woods is his collection of 2018 State Championship shirts. For some backstory, Woods faced off against PCM in 2014, 2017, 2018, and 2021. Only one time PCM came out on top, 2018, when we ended up winning the state championship. Woods starts coming to summer workouts but he doesn’t have any PCM gear. So after asking Bonnett for PCM gear all summer, he never got any. So he decided to take matters into his own hands.

“So I could’ve picked any of those years to get a shirt, but strangely enough the only year I ever hear about is 2018, the only time that they beat us,” he said. 

The decision he made was to get the 2018 shirts from one of his old high school friends that works at Elite. After pulling some strings he gets 25 different colored 2018 State Champions shirts.

“I’m thinking ‘OK fine, if I’m gonna get these 2018 shirts I’m gonna get them in limited edition colors and make everyone so insanely jealous like it’s unreal’ so that’s what I did,” he said.

When asked about his favorite, he thought purple was the best one because, “It’s a hot look.” But then he revealed that while his wife and him were in Mexico for his 40th birthday they began tanning because she wanted to. 

“So for a month, you know, we’re tanning right? And I’m running around here, and everybody’s stinking tan, everybody’s tan, I don’t know what the deal is but everybody is tan,” Woods explained. “So I said I would never do this and this is 100% feminine, but I tan, okay, I mean I still currently tan.” 

So he believes it helps him fit in and it also makes the purple look the best. Coach Woods is just trying to live his best life coaching and being the people that he wants to be with.

“I’m just having a blast seeing all these new personalities, cause I’m not used to this stuff.”