Friendly Competition (The Mahomes/Cheatham Story)

They both had cannons, and Moore took note of the skills and footwork they had accumulated from playing other sports. There’s a good chance no field in America had two better seventh-grade throwers than what Moore was looking at.

Resistance makes us stronger. And it doesn’t always have to be evil resistance. 

Patrick Mahomes, one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks, got as good as he did because of a sports rivalry/friendship that started in middle school. 

It’s a tale of two friends making each other better. If you removed either of them from the story, it doesn’t (can’t?!) turn out the way it did. 

On how they first met:

In their first sports showdown, right before Mahomes moved to Whitehouse, he was on the mound and Cheatham was at the plate. The at-bat was a 14-pitch little kid duel, with Cheatham fouling off pitch after pitch before finally popping out. As Cheatham ran off the field, they both looked at each other like they knew this would be the first of many head-to-head showdowns in their life. “We were definitely sizing each other up,” Cheatham says.

And then where they were on the fateful day in 7th grade when they were both being scouted for the high school team

The whole time that Cheatham and Mahomes threw, Moore kept noticing how supportive they were toward one another.

“Good throw,” Mahomes would say to Cheatham.

“Nice one, Pat!” Cheatham would yell at Mahomes.

After an hour or so, Moore had them stop. He’d seen enough. He already thought both kids had Division I potential. He watched as they high-fived and walked away together, and it was the first hint that Cheatham and Mahomes were, in fact, best friends.

Find your people who make you stronger. 

h/t “The QB Battle that Unlocked Patrick Mahomes” by Ryan Hockensmith. This is a beautiful piece of sports journalism.