Ball and sing like Zia: Before hoops, Gamecocks’ Cooke was known for musical talents
A middle school-aged Zia Cooke stood before close friends and family to send her older brother off to college with a song.
She performed “Mama I Made It” by August Alsina, using her voice to touch the hearts of those in the room.
“It’s giving me chills now,” her father, Stratman Cooke III, said. “She had the whole place in tears. People couldn’t even keep it together.”
Cooke was born to be a basketball player, but those who knew her growing up didn’t see it at first.
She won talent show after talent show with her ability to sing and dance. She sang in front of church on special occasions. She even won a little league football championship with the Mid-City Colts and got her jersey number retired before pivoting to basketball.
Cooke tapped into her singing talent last year by releasing a song through a name, image and likeness partnership with Vault, an NFT platform. The song — fitting for a member of a national championship team — was called “Winning.”
“I definitely do want to get to the point that music is something that is a part of me,” Cooke said. “But the schedule that I have, the things that are going on, it’s hard to make that happen. Definitely going to keep doing it.”
Cooke’s range of talents transcends basketball, and those extracurriculars away from the court have helped her on the hardwood. Today, she’s a senior leader for the No. 1 South Carolina Gamecocks.
From talent shows in Toledo to sold-out crowds in Colonial Life Arena, Cooke has spent her whole life performing under the spotlight.
‘Zia was never gonna be a basketball player’
To honor his father who passed away, Cooke III placed both of his kids in many different programs to explore different avenues of life. His father did the same for him when he was young.
“He kept me in singing, dancing, instruments,” Cooke III said. “He was a very cultural person. Opera, anything you could think of, this man had me in.”
Cooke III placed his daughter in classes at the Toledo Repertoire Theatre, where she learned how to act and perform in front of audiences.
Zia Cooke, 9 years old at the time, quickly picked up on her lines. She was moved up to the master class to act with high-schoolers once the teachers saw her progression.
“Zia was never gonna be a basketball player,” Cooke III said. “We were thinking she was going to be an entertainer.”
Coupled with her acting ability, Zia Cooke was a talented singer and dancer, often imitating the styles of Michael Jackson, Chris Brown and Aaliyah.
Cooke’s talents allowed her to travel. By winning talent shows in Toledo, she was invited to a competition in Detroit, where she won third place as a performer.
“She had the unique ability to be able to sing and dance at the same time,” Cooke III said.
She sang in church on special occasions as well, giving her the experience of performing in front of crowds.
Her brother, Stratman Cooke IV, remembers her power performance at his high school graduation party.
“I was crying,” Cooke IV said. “She never really sang for me like she did that night.”
“When she did that, people wanted Zia to do that for them,” Cooke III added. “She would be so scared to do it and so nervous, but she started doing it.”
Cooke carried her entertainment background into college and exercised it when she could. She arrived in Columbia as a freshman in 2019 as a part of the USC women’s basketball program’s top-ranked recruiting class. She was the No. 4 ranked player nationally by ESPN.
After the COVID-19 outbreak ended South Carolina’s 32-1 season, she began working on music, taking influence from Rod Wave, Summer Walker, Coi Leray and Lil Durk.
“I was just in my room, I was listening to beats and I just was able to make music,” Cooke said. “I made like five songs in like, one week. And then after that, I was able to do it. I think it just came from me being able to experience things and I was able to just write it out.”
Cooke IV also took an interest in music as a college student, working with his sister on a few tracks.
They never released any songs officially, but they’d go to the studio whenever he came down to South Carolina.
“While I’m in the studio, she’ll call me while she’s in the studio and be like, ‘I just made this song,’ ” Cooke IV said. “She’ll always be like, ‘Hey, what should I do better, what should I do with this, what ad-lib should I add to this?’ ”
Zia Cooke released “Winning” last year, and occasionally puts out TikTok videos with clips of her singing. She said she enjoys making music as a pastime when she isn’t preoccupied with her duties for the No. 1 Gamecocks.
“I rarely get bored because there’s always something to do,” Cooke said. “But any time I’m bored, I might go write a song or go record some music.”
Cooke’s talents as an actress, dancer and singer not only gave her a variety of skills, but made her a walking spectacle in her family at an early age.
On occasion at USC, she’s able to re-create the joys of her performance days.
“She brings a lot of light to the family,” Cooke IV said. “She’s the one that brings all the joy and laughter.”
‘Ball like Zia’
Cooke wasn’t always thinking about basketball. But her older brother often worked on his game and had his sister tag along.
“She never really liked sports at all,” Cooke IV said. “She liked to wear dresses and stuff and I kinda forced her to be my brother. When I didn’t have anyone to train myself, I would make her do those things.”
Cooke continued to train with her brother and eventually took an interest in basketball while practicing with him at the YMCA.
Cooke later attained local stardom at Rogers High School in Toledo. She attracted sold-out crowds, turned in high-scoring games, earned appearances on mixtape videos all over YouTube and caught the eye of Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley.
The way Cooke represented Toledo inspired a young rapper in the area, Ta’Keyrah Hughes, who goes by the stage name YK Yung Keyrah, to write a song in her honor called “Ball Like Zia.”
Hughes is now a senior in high school at Start High School.
She said she and Cooke know each other and say hello when Cooke is in the city. Hughes described Cooke as an inspiration, and a reason she continues to pursue rap.
“Down here in Toledo, we know Zia, she’s balling,” Hughes said. “She got her 1,000-point ball. She’s big, she’s getting street names changed. She’s just doing her thing. And to be a girl in Toledo, there’s not really many people that get recognized for their good doings.”
Cooke’s basketball abilities sometimes served as a unifying experience in the community.
Many people in Toledo know each other, Hughes said, so everyone gravitated toward Rogers High’s biggest games to watch Cooke play.
“People might talk a little trash talk, but there weren’t arguments or anything,” Hughes said. “It was just vibes. She’s showing out for us.”
‘That’s her master power’
Cooke carried both her basketball talents and love for music to Columbia.
When it’s time to work, Cooke approaches training with the Gamecocks the same way she’s always approached it.
“She can sing, but she barely sings around us,” Staley told The State. “She’s more quiet than probably the other players. Not in a bad way, she just gets out of the way. She doesn’t want any parts of it.
“She’s calm and cool.”
Staley likes Cooke’s music and also harps on her talents as a player. Her ability to stay locked in is a big reason South Carolina’s had the success that it’s had.
Cooke’s dancing ability helped give her strong footwork as a guard. Her brother placed an emphasis on footwork in their workouts growing up to hone in on that.
Skating also helped, as the two went to the Ohio Skate roller rink in Toledo every week.
“That’s her master power, is in those feet,” their father said. “Zia’s feet are like none other, man. She can move those feet.”
Cooke has been part of two Final Fours and one national championship at USC. She’s eligible for the WNBA Draft after the season.
She leads South Carolina in scoring and is shooting a career-high in field-goal percentage while handling some of the point guard responsibilities for the Gamecocks.
“I think every game, she steps on the floor with that mindset of just dominating, and I think she’s killing it every single time,” teammate Aliyah Boston said after a win against Arkansas.
Cooke now travels the country to perform in front of big crowds and showcase her talents for the world to see, just like her family believed she would.
Though not in the way they once envisioned.
“We never thought she’d played basketball,” Cooke III said. “Never. If someone would have told me this, I would have lost everything I had, because I never would have imagined.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2023 at 8:00 AM.
