Cordell Zalenski credits a pair of Choctaw Nation internships, as well as success on the football field, for helping pave his path to academic success.
Athlete-scholar takes success from football field to workforce
By Zach Maxell
Choctaw Nation
Durant, Okla. - Cordell Zalenski is the embodiment of a successful college student.
Zalenski is a 2012 graduate of Durant High School and is pursuing a degree in accounting at Harding University in Searcy, Ark. He is on an athletic scholarship for football, playing defensive positions for the Harding Bison.
He has completed two summer internships within the Choctaw Nation and will be branching out in 2015 with an internship at WalMart corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.
For Zalenski, each experience has been a stepping stone toward greater successes, in the classroom, on the football field and in the real world. His summer internships at Choctaw Nation—with Chahta Foundation in 2013 and Health Services in 2014—were eye-opening experiences.
“I really learned a lot those two summers, it was a blast,” Zalenski said on a recent holiday visit to Choctaw Nation headquarters in Durant. “It really helped me, working on those projects, to get real-world experience.”
He also worked with the summer youth employment program, now called Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, while in high school. He credits that program, as well as Seth Fairchild at Chahta Foundation and Kellie Elliott at Health Services, for helping him achieve major milestones on his collegiate path.
But, let’s be honest: This really starts on the gridiron.
Zalenski was a stand-out defenseman for the Durant Lions, which earned him a spot on the Harding roster. The Bison have finished 9-2 for the past several seasons and once again reached the Division II playoff bracket this past December.
Zalenski played in 11 games, racking up nearly two dozen tackles, three quarterback sacks and a forced fumble. “I did have a blocked kick, but it’s not on my stats,” he said. “I remember feeling it.”
With a red-shirt season behind him, he has two seasons of eligibility remaining. Thoughts of a college transfer have given way to loyalty to his Bison teammates, and Zalenski says he plans to remain a Bison this coming fall.
“We have really high aspirations and we know we can do better,” he said. “We have really good guys, a team full of leaders. It’s going to be a fun year.”
But the off-season takes a lot of work. “You’re usually sore all the time,” he said of the winter and spring work-outs.
“It’s every day training, a lot of working hard to get better. It sounds old-fashioned,” Zalenski said. “It’s just being able to run every play as fast as you can, waking up and eating a lot of protein shakes, training your body to take blows so you can last through the season.”
Then of course there are accounting classes and the big internship awaiting him in the summer. “My mom’s more proud of the academic side, I think,” he said.
Connie Zalenski’s pride in her children goes way beyond academics or athletics.
“I admire each and every one of them,” she said of her three children, two of whom also work at Choctaw Nation. On Cordell, she says: “I am proud of his faith in God. He takes it into the classroom and onto the field. He doesn’t just talk it, he lives it.”
As a single parent, she received support from the Choctaw Nation as well as their local church in Lane while the kids were growing up. She said Cordell has been “a real positive role model” for his young nephew who has been adopted into the household.
Zalenski said his mom is urging him to return to the Choctaw Nation, which he said he may do after “testing the waters” outside of the 10 ½ counties. His mother works in the tribal accounting office, while brother Waddell Hearn Jr. is in marketing and sister Amber Hearn is a therapist at WindHorse, a tribally run facility in McAlester.
But first, there is the matter of a 12-game football season starting this September: “Hopefully, I’ll be wearing some (championship) rings,” Zalenski said.
It could be the latest in many successes ahead for this Choctaw athlete.