COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — Success and basketball is all Sakima Walker has ever known as a two-time state champion at Africentric and a member of the Lady Nubians undefeated title team in 2018-19. So naturally, Sakima expected that to continue when she headed off to Rutgers for her freshman year of college in 2020; but behind her bright smile, there was a darkness.

“It was tough,” her mother, Nakia Johnson, remembers. “I really didn’t know what was going on with her at the time. When she first went to college I told them she was depressed because of COVID. You know, I’d seen that took a toll on her and I let them know. But I guess because Sakima always wears that smile they didn’t know because she didn’t talk about it and she just always appeared to be happy.”

Sakima struggled at Rutgers, so much so that her sophomore year she became academically ineligible. “I think she just lacked a little bit of self confidence,” said Tihon Johnson – a close family friend of Sakima’s and her basketball trainer in Columbus. “I think she had some self-doubt, I don’t know where from. Hey we all have our setbacks, but it’s how you respond to those things that makes you a champion.”

“I knew what I had to do to get done ‘cause I had never struggled in the classroom,” Sakima said. “It was just the fact that I was experiencing some things and I like, I wasn’t in a good mental space.” So after two challenging years at Rutgers, Sakima transferred to junior college Northwest Florida State.

And she knew she had to get to work. “So the summer I got there, I had to take seven classes to be eligible!” she said. “So I was in 21 hours in the summer.” That season Sakima led the Raiders to the JUCO national championship; and maybe more importantly, graduated with her associate’s degree.

With her confidence and grades high, she re-entered the division one level and joined the reigning national champion South Carolina Gamecocks. A year later, in her home state of Ohio, she hoisted the NCAA championship trophy after the Gamecocks beat Iowa in Cleveland. “Being surrounded by family and my teammates and I don’t know, it was a wholesome moment,” she said.

“To see her win brings me so much joy because of how good of a kid she is, how good of a young woman she is,” Tihon said. “And now, I think she understands what she brings to the game of basketball and to the world at large.”

“To see her, like, rebuild herself and to do what she needed to do and to buckle down. I knew she always had the confidence, but it was just getting out of that mental space,” Nakia said. “Resilient. That’s the word I use when I think about Sakima.”

Sakima’s collegiate career is not over yet. She made the decision this offseason to return to South Carolina for one more year, as the Gamecocks look to repeat as champions.