Salemo swore she was done playing lacrosse — a sport in which she excelled since second grade. "I almost blamed lacrosse for what happened," she says. "'It's lacrosse's fault. Lacrosse is the reason I went crazy.' I was scared to come back."
Salemo was one of the top recruits coming out of Colorado, a four-time all conference player who led Heritage to a state runner-up finish in 2008. She also was a standout ice hockey goalie. When Salemo returned to campus, she kept her distance from the happenings of Stanford lacrosse. But she couldn’t completely stay away from the sport for long. Around February of 2013, she heard about a U13 team needing a coach in nearby Menlo Park and decided to try it out. That led to a junior varsity position at Mountain View High School in 2014, and she became the varsity head coach there in 2015. In the summer of 2014, Salemo was invited to play in the Lake Tahoe Tournament and accepted, just for fun. “I was like, ‘Wow, I really miss playing at a higher level,’” she says. “I had that in the back of my mind last year when I was coaching at Mountain View.” Salemo ran into now-graduated midfielder Hannah Farr, who was in Salemo’s recruiting class, and found herself mindlessly saying she was thinking about going back to the team. At Farr’s encouragement, Salemo emailed coach Amy Bokker, and that began the process of her return. Farr says now that she had always hoped Salemo would come back. Salemo was the player in her class that she had most looked forward to playing with, and the two meshed well when playing and rooming together at Stanford lacrosse camp in the summer before college.
“I always saw her as someone who is a super creative player — that’s why I loved playing with her,” says Farr, who was one of the players who visited Salemo in the group home. “She was
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quick and creative. She always played with a lot of emotion, which is how I play. It was always weird to me to have such a good lacrosse player on campus not playing on our team. Now, she’s crushing it. It’s so awesome.” Salemo hadn’t run or lifted weights since she originally left the team, but immediately began working to get back into shape. She coached 10 camps in California, including helping out with Stanford’s summer camp, and would run six 300s before each session. In the fall, the 5-foot-1 attacker went through a four-day tryout — mainly to see how Salemo would jell with the other players, Bokker says — and earned a spot back on the team under the promise she would regularly see a therapist.
“I was so nervous,” Salemo says. “I was nervous about not having played at the Division I level in four or five years, and even in 2011, I was here for four weeks. That’s not a lot of experience." Salemo also worried about fitting in as a fifth-year senior, a fear that has since dissipated. “There’s a place for me at Stanford lacrosse,” she says. After a strong showing in the fall and preseason, Salemo worked herself into the starting lineup. Bokker says she was “a little rusty” in the first game against Notre Dame, a 13-9 loss Feb. 13 in which Salemo shot 0-for-3 and had four turnovers. But Salemo “came out with guns blazing” eight days later in a win against Ohio State, when she scored four goals and assisted two others to earn Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Player of the Week honors. “It took a lot of courage to come back and step back onto the team,” Bokker says. “Stepping away and being
back, she has such an appreciation to play. She comes out to have a great time, and her attitude is awesome.” Bartron can hear the difference in
Salemo’s voice when they talk on the phone after games. She’s gone from striving to achieve individual perfection to now being more confident about her ability to help the team, Bartron says. As much as Salemo is enjoying lacrosse again, she doesn’t regret not coming back sooner. While away from playing, the anthropology major with a 3.5 GPA found a passion for coaching and the ability to influence others in a positive way, something Farr says she did even as a player. Salemo wants to be a high school teacher, which she says she might not have realized otherwise. She also met some of her closest friends outside of Stanford while out in the community.
Salemo will get at least get one more season in 2017, thanks to a petition for an extra year of eligibility the NCAA granted in early March.
“Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a Division I athlete," she says. "That was a dream since I was a kid. That dream was shattered in 2011, so coming back and being able to do this, the gratitude is indescribable. “The way the team has made me feel accepted, it brings me to tears, because I’m so happy. It’s probably half-and-half, people that know what happened and people that don’t know maybe the details. The people that knew what happened, they accepted me. And, the people who didn’t know didn’t ask questions. They were like, ‘She just wants to play lacrosse.’ "Getting a second chance is incredible.”
April 2016» LACROSSE MAGAZINE 21
©STANFORD
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