Zan, as his friends call him, Cook is a man for all seasons at Hugo High School. All athletic seasons, that is. He plays football, basketball, track, and soccer for the Buffaloes. So out of all of those, which does he like best?

“I like track better, especially since coach (Cody) Tramble came to Hugo and helped me fall in love with it again. I guess I just like the idea of becoming faster than anyone else.”

 This spring he qualified for the state track meet as part of Hugo’s 4X100 relay team and just missed qualifying in the open 100-meter dash. He also competed in the 200-meter dash and, for the first time, the high jump this year. And when he wasn’t competing in one of those events somewhere, he was playing goalie for the soccer team. Zan says his older brother, Kameron, has served as a role model for him.

“Kameron was good enough that he could have played college athletics but he wasn’t able to go. He has inspired me to not only be the fastest, but also the strongest. He’s just a year older than me so we had a lot of brotherly competitiveness, especially in track, to see who could put up the best time. He’s always helped me work on whatever sport I’m in at the time to get better.”

As Zan reflects back on his time as a Buffalo there was an aspect of team sports that he took a lot of pride in.

“I’d like to be remembered for my defense in what ever sport I was playing. I think my best effort on defense was in my junior year when we played Okemah in football. I had to guard their best receiver who was averaging like 400 yards a game and I held him to 10 yards that night.”

As a senior leader, coach Tramble says that Zan set a great example of how to do it for the youngsters.

“He really worked his tail off every day, even coming in before school sometimes to work on getting out of the blocks. The kids would see how hard he worked and they would push themselves to be like him.”

Zan plans to take his football and track abilities to East Central University next fall where he will continue his education.