A goal that goes unwritten is merely just a dream.
As parents, Shéva and Renee Branch echoed that saying through a singular, faith-based belief: teaching their children the importance of goal-setting. Of positive self-talk. So from the time their boys Zachariah and Zion were young, starting their journeys in youth football, their parents sat down and created “vision boards” for them – making sure such dreams had a tangible manifestation.
And as their boys grew, Shéva and Renee had another idea. They bought a swath of chalkboard paint, turning every square inch of the walls of the boys’ bedroom into a sketchable surface. It was a living, breathing canvas of imagination, dreams whispered in the night becoming written goals worked for in the morning.
Before they moved to a new home during Zion’s sophomore year of high school, Shéva said, they took pictures of that room. Preserving childhood intention in time. And a year ago, the parents took a trip down memory lane, looking at the photos and musing on how far their boys had come from childhood: goals in basketball, in track, in football at Bishop Gorman High.
And intent, too, to play for USC.
“We remember taking them to the (USC) games when they were young – I think they were 9, 10 years old, taking them to games and kind of talking about, ‘Hey, could you see yourself running out of the tunnel and playing here?’” Shéva said. “And for them to have those goals … it was pretty exciting to see that, for it all to come together.”
It came together, in a word, together. On the Christmas after Zion’s junior season at Bishop Gorman, the two sat their parents down and delivered news: They wanted to play college football with each other. A great surprise to Shéva and Renee, to be sure. But the boys had their goals, and so exactly a year later, a few days after Zion announced his commitment as a Trojan, Zachariah followed.
Their trajectories have veered apart at USC, similar to their personalities. Safety Zion is 6-foot-2 and steadfast, a year older and wiser, clawing his way back into USC’s plans from a season-ending injury last year. Receiver Zachariah is a 5-10 physical firecracker, one of the most-hyped freshmen in college football with four touchdowns in his first four USC games, a ready-made viral fit in a city of stars.
But they worked for this – and have shared in the ups and downs – together.
“To be able to see them live out their dream, together, is surreal,” Shéva said.
‘Iron sharpens iron’
Once Zachariah arrived as a freshman at Bishop Gorman in 2019, nobody guarded him in one-on-ones except for Zion.
It was pretty much understood, Gaels head coach Brent Browner said. If any defensive backs wanted a crack at Zachariah, they’d have to go through Zion. There was no trash-talk. No extracurriculars. Everybody just knew, Browner said, those two dudes were going to go at it.
Zion became the first freshman to start at the hotly competitive national powerhouse. Of course, Zachariah wanted to do it, too. And did.
“We always say here, ‘Iron sharpens iron,’ from the Bible verse Proverbs,” Browner said. “And basically, that’s what they did every single day.”
It started young, egged on – sneakily – by Shéva. He’d never let them share the same side of the field in flag football, each playing one half on defense, one on offense. Zachariah was the overzealous little brother, the kid whose legs moved sometimes faster than his brain processed instruction; Zion was the older torch-bearer, a perfectionist who wasn’t about to let perfect be outdone.
“They’re the yin and the yang of each other,” Browner said.
Growing up, they’d play chess and dominoes for push-ups and sit-ups. Friends would groan when they’d go over to the Branches’ house, because longtime sprints and strength coach Shéva, who played fullback at San Jose State, would make everyone engage in five-minute-long planking sessions (never actually enforcing the full five minutes, because these were children, after all). The brothers did everything together, from piano recitals to spelling bees.
And in one such spelling bee, Zachariah was so eager to show up his older brother that he claimed to his dad he’d memorized 500 words in the snap of a finger.
“I’d be like, ‘Are you sure you studied?’” Shéva remembered.
“‘Yeah, I looked at all of them,’” the father recalled his youngest son saying.
“And you’re just like, ‘Man, c’mon,’” Shéva said. “Are you sure?”
‘Each other’s biggest fan’
There was enough room in the Branches’ childhood home, certainly, for the boys to have separate bedrooms. But Shéva and Renee wanted their boys to grow up close. So they put them in that same room with the painted walls, instituting a strict no-phones-at-night policy, all the way up until Zachariah’s senior year at Gorman, when Zion left for USC.
“It was a lot of countless hours of them, I’m sure, staying up late night talking to each other, with no distractions,” Shéva said.
Lincoln Riley has coached brothers before. Never quite like this. Not with Zachariah and Zion’s closeness, a bond deeper than the moniker “best friends” or “siblings” can summate.
And he’ll goad them in practice, the USC coach grinned, with that understanding. Zachariah drops a pass? Ah, let’s get Zion over here to do it. One of them beats each other in a one-on-one rep? Ah, better tell the family at Thanksgiving.
“You can tell – they are like, each other’s biggest fan and biggest supporter,” Riley said Thursday, “and probably inspiration.”
Both were blue-chippers coming out of Bishop Gorman – Zion recording five interceptions as a sophomore, Zachariah becoming one of the most-hyped recruits in the nation after an electrifying 14-touchdown junior year – but they charted different routes.
Things just came a bit more natural to Zachariah, Browner said; the younger brother’s challenge was patience, putting the grind in to push himself past natural talent. Zion was the role model, the older brother who had to fight just a bit harder to pave the way.
The summer before Zion’s freshman year at USC and Zachariah’s senior year at Gorman, Zion had a “freak accident,” he said as reported by SCNG’s Adam Grosbard, that necessitated knee surgery.
The day after the surgery, Zachariah was there helping his brother out of the hospital.
“‘Just put your arm around me,’” Shéva remembered Zachariah saying. “‘I got you.’”
They talked “pretty much every day,” on the phone, Renee said, through a year of Zion rehabbing on the sidelines. Praying together. Zachariah offering a word of support.
“Just seeing him battling through adversity, those troubling times, I’m always in his corner,” Zachariah told reporters this fall.
They came into this spring, then, with the exact same amount of game experience at USC, eager to prove themselves. And the first thing Zachariah asked Zion when he got to campus, Shéva said, was to be his roommate.
“I’m glad they’re both together, because I feel like, knowing them both – the support that they give each other is only going to strengthen them through the good and the bads,” Browner said.
‘That kid’s insane’
Check Zachariah and Zion’s phones now, former Bishop Gorman running back Cam’ron Barfield said, and he guarantees they still have a list of goals pinned as their device’s wallpaper.
And sure enough, in a September video by Whistle, Zachariah showed his lockscreen – a picture of a handwritten list. Chief among them: Win a Heisman Trophy.
Most every teammate at USC, it seems, has a story of instantly knowing Zachariah was the next big thing. Returning running back Austin Jones told his dad, after USC’s spring practice, the kid was the “real deal.” Tight end Lake McCree saw the youngest Branch’s first speed drills and knew, he said, “he had a switch that was different from other people.” Transfer MarShawn Lloyd has claimed he’s said Zachariah’s special since arriving from South Carolina.
“That kid,” Lloyd said in September, “is insane.”
In Zachariah’s first game, he scored two touchdowns, including a 96-yard kickoff return. His agility can only be understood by the naked eye, capable of hitting hyperspeed in a split second, built from years of top-speed training with Shéva; it’s talent that buzzes behind an electric personality, having adopted Christiano Ronaldo’s signature “SIUUU” as a touchdown celebration from playing the game FIFA.
Baltimore Ravens wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. has messaged him. Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill has shown him love. The younger Branch has burst onto the national spotlight – but brother Zion, coming off an injury, is still scratching for consistent playing time in the safety room as a redshirt freshman.
Zion’s opportunity is coming, Riley said, after a standout fall and a rapid recovery. And the two brothers share everything, Browner and the brothers’ parents said. Through good. Through bad. No sense of one ever being in the other’s shadow.
Before their first collegiate game against their parents’ alma mater, San Jose State – a full-circle scene that made Renee just about come to tears – Zachariah ran out of the tunnel, scanning for his brother. The two had prayed together before every game since Bishop Gorman; reunited again at USC, they convened there in the end zone.
They’ve done the same, in every game since. Dropping to a knee. Bowing their heads. Clasping arms. Present, on different paths but the same journey, together.
