Kalemba Earns Prestigious Award

Zane Kalemba (c) accepts the Roper Trophy with Director of Athletics Gary Walters (l) and head coach Guy Gadowsky. Photo by Beverly Schaefer

Senior goaltender Zane Kalemba has been award the 2010 William Winston Roper Trophy in recognition as the top senior male athlete at Princeton. Kalemba shares the trophy with Justin Frick and Jack Leonard.

The William Winston Roper Trophy is the highest male student-athlete award at Princeton. The award was originally given by Mrs. William Winston Roper and the Class of 1902 in honor of Princeton's famed football coach. It goes annually to "a Princeton senior male of high scholastic rank and outstanding qualities of sportsmanship and general proficiency in athletics." It has been awarded annually since 1936.

Kalemba graduates as one of the most decorated players in Princeton hockey history and the cornerstone of Princeton's meteoric rise to college hockey's Top 10.

He ranks either first or second in every career category for goalies, topping the Princeton record books with 57 wins, nine shutouts and a .912 save percentage and ranking second with a career 2.46 goals-against average and 2,680 saves.

Kalemba's awards and honors are equally impressive. He was a candidate for the 2009 Hobey Baker Award as college hockey's top player, becoming just the second Princeton player to be nominated for the award named for the Princeton legend. As a junior in 2009, Kalemba also was the ECAC and Ivy League Player of the Year and won the ECAC's Ken Dryden Award as the league's top goaltender. Kalemba capped the year with a second-team All-America honor, becoming the fifth Princetonian to receive that honor in men's hockey.
 
He emerged on the college hockey scene during his sophomore season when he spearheaded Princeton's run through the playoffs to the 2008 ECAC and Ivy League championships and an NCAA tournament berth. He was named the MVP of the ECAC tournament as Princeton bested Harvard in the title game for its first league title in 10 years. His best statistical season was his junior year, as he recorded 22 wins and had a goals-against under two in leading the Tigers back to the NCAA tournament for the second straight season.

He was also named the No. 6 Princeton male athlete of the past decade.

Kalemba is a sociology major from Saddle Brook, N.J.