Michael Cherry achieved a lifelong goal two months ago when he made the U.S. Olympic team in the 400 meters.
Cherry ran a personal-best time of 44.35 seconds to finish as the runner-up in the trials. Five years earlier, he failed to make the 400 final despite a personal-best time in the semifinals.
Though he knew the top three finishers at the trials made the team, Cherry waited until USA Track and Field announced its final roster before he exhaled.
“I struggled with it the first two weeks because I couldn’t believe it,” said Cherry, a former star at Oscar Smith High in Chesapeake. “I knew I had the potential to go, but now I’m really on it. I just can’t believe I pulled it off.”
News of his accomplishment was celebrated in, of all places, Marietta, Georgia — where it reached Richard Morgan, the football coach at Marietta High, and assistants Terrance and Troy Duke.
“Me and the Dukes were talking and they came in and said, ‘Did you hear about Cherry?'” said Morgan, the former coach at Oscar Smith. “I’m so proud of him. It’s just so great.”
There was a time when the only sport that mattered to Cherry was football. He had dreams of becoming the next great football player to come out of Hampton Roads.
But by the end of his sophomore year, when he was deep on the depth chart, he realized that maybe football wasn’t going to be his sport.
“I played my freshman and sophomore year,” said Cherry, a speedster receiver. “Then my junior year, when I was finally going to get some burn and actually play, I wind up quitting. I had my position coach looking at me saying, ‘What are you doing?’ and ‘Why are you quitting?’ Everybody was looking at me like I was crazy. Everyone couldn’t believe it.”
Cherry and Morgan formed a relationship outside of football because he was in Morgan’s weightlifting class.
“He was telling me he was going to make me stronger and work on my speed,” Cherry said. “He had me in there power-cleaning. He treated me like a football player even though I had quit.”
Morgan had Cherry doing the same workouts as his players. And he could tell a difference early on.
“He got so much stronger. You could just tell his body was changing,” Morgan said. “He ended up looking like a bodybuilder when it was all said and done. He was muscular and very developed. His hard work paid off.
“I think the weight training developed him in his speed even more because it took him to a different level, and he was able to endure those long races. Now, I don’t think I had anything to do with him being in the Olympics, but every kid needs a push, and he got one.”
Cherry blossomed on the track.
In 2013, he won the 400 meters at the Group AAA state meet in 46.02 seconds, which ranked as the nation’s top high school performance, and was a two-time winner in the 400 at the New Balance Nationals Outdoor. He was the national record-holder in the 300 meters at 33.05, a time he set at the state indoor meet in March. And he was the Gatorade Virginia Boys Track and Field Athlete of the Year.
“I think it was a good decision,” Cherry said, laughing about his decision to pick track over football. “But I always think about playing football every single day. Even to this day, I hang out with a lot of football players. And I think, ‘What if I wouldn’t have run track or what if I would have done both?’ I still think I would have been Division I, but who knows? But I think I made the right decision.”
So does Morgan.
“I think Michael, if he would have stayed with football, I think he had that same type of ability that Grant Holloway was,” Morgan said about Holloway, a former two-star standout at Grassfield High who is also at the Olympics. “Grant just continued to develop, and by the time he was a senior, he was unstoppable. Michael could have been like that, but ultimately, he would have gone to school for track. You could tell that his work ethic and his development was going to lead to real special things. And, obviously, it has.”
News of Cherry’s Olympic accomplishment also was celebrated in Ithaca, New York, where Justin Byron is the associate head track coach at Cornell.
Cherry ran for Byron’s 5 Star Track Program, a youth track and field club, and Byron remembers Cherry always talking about football. But he knew Cherry could be “special” in track.
So, one day, he had a heart-to-heart talk with him.
“I remember I told him, ‘I don’t know how good you are in football, but I can tell you that I’ve never heard of you. But you got a future in this track thing,'” Byron said. “And I’m glad he stuck with it.”
Cherry became an eight-time All-American and two-time national champion, first for Florida State and then LSU.
He also represented the United States at the World Championships, the World Indoor Championships, the World Junior Championships and the 2016 North American, Central American and Caribbean (NACAC) Under-23 Championships.
At the 2019 World Championships in Doha, Qatar, Cherry won gold medals on both the American 4×400-meter relay and the American mixed 4×400 relay, which set a world record.
His quest for Olympic gold begins Sunday with the first round of the 400 meters.
Larry Rubama, 757-575-6449, larry.rubama@pilotonline.com
Cherry’s schedule
400 meters
First round: 9:53 p.m. Saturday
Semifinals: 7:05 a.m. Monday
Final: 8 a.m. Thursday
