Cutler Zamzow never doubted the ability of Texas A&M’s 1,600-meter relay, the only question was whether it would reach its potential.
The relay team of Jevon O’Bryant, Zamzow, Kimar Farquhausen and Aumad Robinson went into the NCAA Outdoor National Championships with high expectations and a fair amount of pressure.
“If we could all do it on the same day, we could go under 3 minutes easily,” said Zamzow, a Goliad graduate. “We knew we could do it, we just had to do it on the same day.”
Zamzow and his teammates came through in a record-breaking fashion, winning the meet in a time of 2:58.37 on Friday night at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.
The Aggies set a meet record and a school record, and ran the fifth-fastest time in NCAA history.
Zamzow ran the second leg on the relay and turned a split of 45.16 seconds.
“Our intensity of training has increased so much in college rather than in high school,” Zamzow said. “We do so much more speed work and some longer runs sometimes. It’s just not the same training.”
Zamzow put on 10 pounds since he won the 400-meter dash for the Tigers as a senior at the Class 3A state meet in a time of 47.87. Most of the weight Zamzow has gained is muscle, since his body fat has been measured at 8%.
“ I’ve been thinking about that so much,” Zamzow said. “My mentality, my stride pattern. I weigh about the same, but something changed. I think my mentality changed, I’m more aggressive when I run now. I attack it harder,
“I’m more aggressive. Instead of just running on the track, I’m really pushing off the ground. So with each stride, I make up ground and it’s so much easier to run faster, longer that way than just moving along the track.”
The championship was even more special to Zamzow since it came on the 30th anniversary of the indoor 1,600-meter relay championship won by his father, Stacy, the girls head track & field coach at Goliad, when he was at Texas A&M.
Stacy, Cutler’s mother Kalleen and brother Cord were at the meet.
“It was pretty great,” Cutler Zamzow said. “We had a big, long talk after that. We were on cloud nine. It was awesome, it was great.”
Zamzow has completed his junior season at Texas A&M and will graduate next year with a degree in animal science.
He hopes to someday own a ranch, but he’s already begun thinking about his final season of track, which he hopes will include a chance to compete at nationals in the open 400.
“I agree, I could be in the open,” Zamzow said. “I ran a 45.9 and that was my best time until I split a 45.16 in the relay. I think I could do so much better than that. My goal for next year is 44.7.”