Bill Weigel, a long time top assistant football coach at Pascack Valley under head coach Craig Nielsen, will now be leading a new team at the start of next season — the Paramus Spartans.

“It was a very difficult decision, but my professional aspiration has always been to be a head coach,” Weigel said about his choice.

Weigel, who served as Pascack Valley’s quarterbacks coach last season, does have head coaching experience under his belt.

In a short stint away from Pascack Valley, he was the head coach at Lakeland High School for three seasons (2012-2014). Lakeland compiled a 20-11 record with Weigel at the helm and made the playoffs twice.

Before accepting the Lakeland job, he served as the offensive coordinator for six years at Pascack Valley, from 2006 to 2012.

With Wiegel in charge of the pass game this season, quarterback Colin Dedrick put up very respectable numbers. Dedrick threw for 1,852 yards and 21 touchdowns, with a 57.1 completion percentage. The senior only threw nine interceptions.

“I thoroughly enjoyed my tenure here as a coach at Pascack Valley, and I would have been perfectly content to stay had the position not opened up,” he explained.

Weigel will replace long time head coach Dan Sabella, who has been the Spartans’ head coach since 2007. Sabella recently moved his office across town to coach Paramus Catholic. Sabella led Paramus to the playoffs in all nine years of his tenure, including appearances in the North 1, Group 4 championship in 2013 and 2014. Ironically, Pascack Valley won both.

“The prospect of playing against PV is a double-edged sword. It will be fun in one aspect because of the caliber of the matchup, but extremely unsettling on the flipside because of my time here. It’s a lose-lose scenario,” Weigel said regarding a possible Pascack Valley-Paramus matchup.

But even with the coaching move to Paramus, Weigel said he will still remain a physical education teacher at Pascack Valley.

“Coaching in a school where you don’t teach isn’t as hard as people think,” Weigel said. “It just means you have to try harder to make relationships and that means those will last longer.”

As for his favorite memory from his time at PV?

“Definitely beating Hopatcong 22-0 in my first year as offensive coordinator, considering they had the state’s all-time leading rusher,” he reflected. “Playing in two title games didn’t hurt either.”