(Second in a series)
Zachary Downs Shattuck, born in Greenbelt, was diagnosed with hypochondroplasia dwarfism when he was an infant. Despite the challenges, Zach excelled at sports throughout his high school years and just before he entered college he discovered he was a rather good swimmer. This month, Zach competes in four events in the Tokyo Paralympics.
Zach entered Frostburg University in the fall of 2014. At his parents’ urging, he approached the swim team coach Justin Anderson to ask if he could recommend someone in the area who could coach Zach in swimming. Anderson replied, “If you’ll commit to the workout schedule, you are welcome to join the Frostburg swim team.” At his first meet, in the 100-meter backstroke, he had to be shown how to start and his teammates gave him a crash course in how to do a flip turn. He attended all the practices and swim meets with the Frostburg swimmers, quickly becoming a crowd favorite. It wasn’t just his friendly but focused determination, despite coming in dead last in almost every race through college. But Zach was accomplishing something else; beginning his sophomore year he was posting very competitive times for his classification in the Paralympic community. In 2015, when the announcer noted that the swimmer who’d just finished last had also set a new American record in his Paralympic class, it brought down the house with the fans and his teammates.
Anderson soon added a Paralympic Coaching Certification to his résumé. In 2016, he coached Zach at the U.S. Paralympic Trials in Charlotte, N.C., before a large contingent of Zach’s extended family. Zach finished the trials as the second alternate for the U.S. Men’s Team competing in Rio de Janeiro.
Zach finished up at Frostburg in 2018 and when Anderson received an offer to coach for the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Va., he asked Zach to come along as assistant coach. Zach was ecstatic for a chance to continue his training for Tokyo 2020.
Since Charlotte, Zach has had the chance to travel to Toronto, Miami, Mexico City, Lima, England and Singapore, competing in a wide range of international para-swim competitions. At this year’s U.S. Men’s Paralympic Trials in Minneapolis, Zach broke three American records in his classification, two of which were his own.
Now Zach is wrapping up final training at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs in advance of flying to Tokyo on August 14. In addition to Zach, one of the athletes he coached at Mary Washington, Joey Peppersack, also made the U.S. men’s swim team. And the coach who took a chance on Zach back in 2014, Anderson, will be in Tokyo as part of the U.S. coaching staff.
Many of the athletes see the Olympics undoubtedly as “it all comes down to this.” For Zach, this is just another chapter in an amazing journey of rising above it all.
So, Zach missed the family reunion this year in West Virginia. But he was felt everywhere, in the calm and confident way the older cousins guided and cared for their younger cousins, on and off the ambling Potomac River. So much of what they know they’ve learned from Zach, who’s led anything but a normal, ordinary life.