Howie Zaron is back on the doorstep of the team he used to coach, settling in 40 minutes up the freeway with the Langley Rams.
The B.C. Junior Football Conference club announced the hiring of Zaron as its new general manager last week, at the same time hiring BCFC legend Matt ‘Snoop’ Blokker as head coach.
Zaron has been involved as a football coach and administrator for more than 20 years, and is known as a bombastic sort who says exactly what he thinks.
The Langley native was head coach of Chilliwack’s Huskers from 2006 to 2009, and was honoured with back-to-back Ranji Mattu Awards as BCFC coach of the year awards in 2007 and 2008.
Zaron has won three B.C. community football provincial championships as a coach, one with Langley minor and two with North Surrey minor.
In 2017 he has coached at North Surrey, was a B.C. all-star youth coach and was on the Team BC and Canada Cup coaching staffs.
Zaron begins immediately, and will work closely with Blokker in all aspects of operations, including recruiting and preparing for the 2018 season.
Blokker, meanwhile, is a four-time BCFC coach of the year, and he was honoured as the CJFL coach of the year twice.
He has posted the most career wins by a head coach in BCFC history, and his 106-regular season and 26 play-off wins places him second on the all-time list for most victories by a head coach in CJFL history, Matheson boasted.
Blokker began his junior football head coaching career with the Victoria Rebels in 2003 and guided them to a B.C. championship title and the national championship game in his first season.
Blokker coached two seasons in Victoria, before moving to Nanaimo where he became head coach of the expansion VI Raiders program in 2005.
Blokker’s Raiders lost the BCFC semi-final game in their inaugural season and then went on to post the most successful run in BCFC history with seven BCFC championship titles and three national championship wins in a span of eight seasons (2006 to 2013).
Blokker moved on to become head coach of the Calgary Colts junior football program in 2014, taking on the challenge of building the Colts – which went winless in 2013 – back into a contender.
Under Blokker’s direction, the Colts went 4-4 in 2014, 5-3 in 2015, 7-2 in 2016 and advanced to the PFC championship game all three seasons.