Behind the cheering crowds, television lights, and fans seeking autographs, the reality behind the glamor is often unseen – that the heroes and heroines of college athletics are still mostly teenagers trying to figure out their place in the world.
That reality came to light Thursday afternoon when Samarie Walker, a freshman forward on the nation’s No. 2 women’s basketball team who played in 17 of the team’s games this season, announced that she is leaving the team.
Walker, who did not practice with the team for several days and did not travel to Chapel Hill, N.C. for the Huskies’ 83-57 victory over North Carolina on Monday, said she has been struggling with her commitment to playing basketball.
“Right now I can’t give the team the energy and commitment that it needs to be successful,” Walker said in a statement distributed to reporters after the team’s practice session late Thursday. “I need to go and figure out what my future holds. I have struggled with this for some time, and remaining here would not be fair to my teammates or the coaching staff.”
Head coach Geno Auriemma said Walker informed him Thursday morning that she wanted to leave the team. He said the former McDonald’s All-American from Ohio had been struggling with her desire to play basketball since before she arrived in Storrs.
“Samarie came to me back in October and said, I’m really struggling with basketball. I said: since when? She said: Since sophomore year in high school,” Auriemma said. “It’s been a real struggle for her the last couple of years and it kind of caught up with her. She’s got to figure out what she’s going to do. Whether it’s basketball or not, I think it’s a bigger issue than that right now. We’ve been trying to work with her for the last couple of months, but it just hasn’t worked.”
He said that last week in the days leading to the North Carolina game, he asked Walker to take time to decide whether she wanted to make the commitment necessary to remain with the team.
“You can’t make somebody do something that in their heart they don’t want to do,” Auriemma said. “That’s very frustrating for everybody. Her mom and dad have seen this happen in the past. There’s only so much that a coaching staff or anyone else can do. This isn’t a game or an extracurricular activity where you just use it as a hobby. When you accept a scholarship to play Division 1 basketball at this level there’s a certain amount of commitment required physically, mentally, and emotionally …You’ve to be able to put forth that kind of commitment, that kind of effort, that kind of passion. Samarie says she’s not able to do that at this point.”
Walker withdrew from UConn and transferred to the University of Kentucky, where she will have three years of eligibility remaining, beginning at the conclusion of the fall semester in December 2011. She will be eligible to play in games following the fall semester of the 2011-12 season.
The loss of Walker, who averaged 6.2 point and 5.8 rebounds during 18.8 minutes per game this season, means that the defending NCAA champions have only nine players to call upon for the remainder of the year.
The Huskies have started two freshmen for most of the season – guard Bria Hartley and center Stefanie Dolson – and Walker had provided strong rebounding and defense in the forward position, notably in the nationally televised game in November against Baylor’s 6-8 center, Brittany Griner, which the Huskies won 65-64.
Walker and senior guard Lorin Dixon have provided most of the bench strength for the Huskies as substitutes for All-American senior Maya Moore, junior Tiffany Hayes, and sophomore Kelly Faris, all guards. Redshirt sophomore center Heather Buck, freshman guard Lauren Engeln, and freshman forward Michala Johnson – all still developing players who average less than 10 minutes per game – are the other available players. Junior guard Caroline Doty is out for the year recovering from a knee injury.
The Huskies were impressive in defeating North Carolina, and Auriemma said he noticed that his team seemed to have regained much of the confidence it had exhibited before the team’s Christmas break and then suffering its only loss of the season against Stanford.
“In the locker room before the game there was just a different feeling,” he said talking about Monday night’s game. “The body language, the look on their faces was something that hadn’t been there in a long time … We got a little bit of our swagger back. It was a group effort. Every huddle was like that.”
Auriemma said that beyond his five starters, he likely will have Dixon and Buck as the only experienced players to bring in from a depleted bench. However, he noted it would not be the first time he relied upon just seven players: he did so in 1995, when the Huskies won their first NCAA title.
“In 1995 we played 7 players,” he said. “If they’re the wrong seven, you’re not going to make it. If they’re the right seven, then you’ve got a chance to make it. I think we’ll see. We’ll find out a little more as we go along. Whatever the outcome of each game or the season as we go forward isn’t going to have anything to do with the fact that we only have seven players. We could have failed at what we want to do with 10. We could accomplish our goal with seven. It’s really not going to have any bearing on it. We’re certainly not going to talk about it beyond today, who we have or who we don’t have.”
