Zakem fights to overcome bias, walks on to w. lax

Walking on to any varsity sport at Princeton is tough. Walking on to a team that has won three national titles is simply remarkable.

Enter junior Diana Zakem. Zakem walked on to the women's lacrosse team the fall of her freshman year. As a good-humored civil engineer, Zakem embodies the qualities of a walk-on, — hardworking with a go-get 'em attitude.

As a Georgia native, walking-on was Zakem's only option, since recruiting for lacrosse is rarely done in states south of Virginia.

"I'm from Georgia, and they don't really 'have lacrosse' in Georgia according to the coach," Zakem said.

In order to make a blip on the coach's radar, she had to call during the spring of her senior year of high school to express interest. Head coach Chris Sailer was very encouraging.

"In May I called to tell [Sailer] I was coming, in June I got my summer training packet, and in the fall I tried out," Zakem said.

While she was putting in solo training sessions in the sweltering Georgia heat, the recruits were training together at a summer lacrosse camp. In addition to not being able to partake in the summer bonding, Zakem had to actively seek out the practice sessions and tryouts after arriving on campus.

"You have to take the initiative," Zakem emphasized.

Some housing luck made things a little easier. Zakem found herself living on the same hall as junior defender Lauren Vance, who encouraged her to try out and let the captains know of her interest.

Yet even with this bit of luck, breaking into a team with many of the best college lacrosse players in the nation — most of whom have spent time building a rapport — was daunting. Not only did Zakem miss out on recruiting trips and summer training, but being in the South kept her out of the lacrosse culture that is so pervasive in the northeast.

"It seemed like all the girls knew each other right away because lacrosse is so local in the mid-Atlantic," Zakem said. "So most of the girls go to camp together or go to rival schools. It's kind of hard to break in. But now that I look back on it, they put in a lot of effort to get me to hang out with them."

Lacrosse has two tryout periods, one in the fall and one in the spring. In both cases, only a handful of people are up to the challenge. During the fall of her freshman year, Zakem was the only person trying out.

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The fall tryout period, which can last a few weeks, is much more extensive than the spring season, which is generally not much more than a week long. The fall tryout period was more than a little disconcerting for Zakem, who was walking on eggshells for four weeks until, "[Sailer] called me in to her office at the end of fall-ball season and said that I had made the team."

Four weeks of uncertainty also made Zakem more reluctant to bond with the team.

"I was really hesitant to become friends with them because I didn't know if I was going to make it. So fall of my freshman year I sort of made my own friends, but it was kind of bad because I wasn't as tight with my teammates as I would have liked to have been. That really didn't happen until the fall of my sophomore year."

The challenge to prove her abilities, however, wasn't over.

"I feel like the coach is less likely to give you a chance because you're a walk-on. A walk-on has to play really, really well three times as much to get noticed. I feel like it's a constant battle. I think most walk-ons feel like that."

Zakem explains that this phenomenon is most likely unconscious on behalf of the coaches. It is natural for a coach to want to see, and indeed expect, the player she recruited to bring something specific to the team. That is the purpose of recruiting.

"They recruit specific players because they see the stars in high school and they say, 'Oh, this person is going to be a star on my team.' They aren't necessarily looking for walk-ons to be great players because they didn't recruit them."

In spite of the struggle to shine on the field, Zakem is glad she's stuck with the varsity program and being a walk-on has its perks, too.

"There's the athlete world and the academic world at Princeton, so it's fun being a walk-on because athletes respect me for being an athlete, and students respect me for getting in here based on my academics."

Since her arrival, Zakem has properly balanced her life as a student and athlete, appreciating how hard one must work to succeed at both areas.