GOING
PLACES
Zach Zwinak takes
a direct route to the top
of PSU's depth chart
S
ome people looked at Zach Zwinak
and saw a linebacker. Understandable. In youth league football, he was too
big to play with his age group, and by the
time he reached high school, his coach
barely needed anyone else on the kickoff coverage team. Zwinak was always the first to get to
the returner, and he always made the tackle.
Others saw a fullback. Again, understandable.
Zwinak is what you'd call solid, his 6-foot-1, 235pound body the type that, when it moves, generally requires verbs like bulled, churned or rumbled.
But Zwinak was adamant. He would tackle,
sure, and block when necessary. But what he
wanted to play was tailback.
"He always wanted to carry the ball," said his
mother, Diane Thomas. "That was his desire."
Still is. Said center Matt Stankiewich, "I never
saw anyone who wants to run the football more
than he does."
And the reason that works is that in addition
to his strength and love for the game, Zwinak
has a more elusive trait: speed.
It's what enabled him to rush for more than
2,000 yards as a high school senior, and what
catapulted him from fourth on Penn State's depth
THOUSAND-YARD
STARE Zwinak
finished with 1,000
yards despite playing
sparingly at the beginning of the season.
