Zion Cheatham remembers the pain coursing through his body.
He exploded from the starting box, intent on setting SUNY Cortland up for a second consecutive NCAA Division III 4×400-meter relay championship.
And then his foot stepped on the white line. He was disqualified and hopes of a national championship evaporated in a blink. Cheatham cost his teammates the ultimate prize before they even got a chance to run.
That was last year.
The Lockport High School graduate rebounded to put together an All-American career with one more season remaining. This season, Cheatham set new personal-bests in four events, the 100- (10.63 seconds), 200- (21.46) and 400-meter dash (48.34) during the outdoor season and the 300 (34.87) during indoor, while winning the SUNYAC championship in the 400.
In addition to his 2024 national championship in the 4×400, Cheatham has earned All-American honors three times during his career.
“I know everything happens for a reason and it was a lesson,” Cheatham said. “I just worked on every race after to stay inside the lanes and it starts from practice.”
After the team was officially disqualified from the event, he relied heavily on his teammates and coaches to help pick him up. They helped remind him of everything he did for the team.
The group helped remind him of the important role that he played in helping them even make it to the national championships.
“I think there’s a big part of it where the guys on the team as much as everything else,” SUNY Cortland head coach Steve Patrick said. “I’d love to take credit for it but I think the big part from our end is just, hey, this is a mistake and we don’t want to make that mistake and let’s move forward. We don’t want to dwell on it, we don’t want to keep fixated on it.”
He needed to turn the page mentally if he wanted a chance to have a good junior season. He had to figure out a way mentally to move past the mistake and have success in his penultimate season.
He did just that, all the while, he had to battle his body and his mind. He had to simultaneously recover from a hamstring injury while remaining confident in his abilities. It was not easy for him but he figured it out and had a lot of success as a junior.
“He had a bad hamstring injury right at the end of November and that really took him out for almost the next month,” Patrick said. “So that set him behind a little bit indoors and also had him a little bit ginger about trusting it. So then he really kind of figured that out in terms of outdoor. He got a conference championship in the 400. We hit a nice time in our 4×1.”
It is that mindset that has not only allowed him to have individual success but also helped his team as a whole have success. He regularly takes younger runners under his wing and helps guide them, especially as they are adjusting to being freshman college athletes and everything that comes with that.
He serves as not only a role model for his teammates but somebody they can look to when they need help. In a meet in New York City, Cheatham was talking to Patrick about one of his younger teammates and comparing the fact that the two of them both had similar experiences as first-semester freshmen.
Both wanted to go as fast as they possibly could to try to impress their teammates and coaches. The two both struggled with confidence and felt like if they did not set a new personal-best every single event, they were a failure.
“He definitely wanted it but had to learn how to let some of that go and just relax and perform rather than fight himself as well as the other things,” Patrick said. “So he had good instincts with it. He was a good person and we like to think we’ve helped them move on to that next level.”
His success has come from the fact that he keeps his training consistent and the fact that he maintains a calm demeanor on the track. He sticks to a strict pre-race routine that includes not letting himself get into his head too much. He also trusts the fact that the work he puts in during practice will pay off when the time comes to perform.
While he does have a quiet demeanor, his mindset changes depending on whether he is running an individual event or a relay race.
He feels more pressure before the relays to perform compared to when he is running an individual race. He knows that three other runners are relying on him to figure it out.
As he prepares for his senior year, Cheatham’s goals are simple. He wants to shatter his previous best times. He wants to qualify for the nationals as an individual and become an All-American.
“Whatever you’re doing, it’s finding the next level of getting to,” Patrick said. “It’s recognizing that Zion is a junior and all the things that he’s accomplished were A-plus things for junior year Zion and now that he’s a senior he’s got to realize that the scale’s kind of been reset and the things he did last year won’t be an A-plus anymore, they’ll be like a B-plus. So it’s just recognizing that additional gear that he has to find.”