The end of Luka Zakman’s baseball career once seemed imminent.
Then a season away from the sport changed everything for the 2023 Hanover Central graduate, who recently finished his first year at South Suburban College in South Holland, Illinois.
“It was beyond my expectations,” Zakman said. “I’d just come off of labrum surgery, and I didn’t think I was going to play sports after high school. But not having my senior year made me want to play more baseball.”
Zakman went 6-2 with a 2.25 ERA in 48 innings across 12 appearances for South Suburban. He said he started the season as a reliever and finished it as a victorious postseason starter as he allowed only one earned run in 7 1/3 innings during the Bulldogs’ 3-2 win over Triton on May 8.
“There was a lot of good energy from the team, and I put that out on the mound,” Zakman said. “It was just a great season.”
Zakman’s comeback continues with the Lake County Corn Dogs (11-2) in the Crestwood Collegiate League. He is 2-0 with a 2.08 ERA over 13 innings across three starts, and Corn Dogs manager Justin Huisman said he has been impressed with Zakman’s undaunted approach.
“He’s a competitor,” Huisman said. “He isn’t afraid to attack a hitter with his best stuff and see what happens. You can tell he’s not intimidated by any situation, and he’s confident in what he’s doing.”
Zakman recalls feeling very confident as he entered his senior year at Hanover Central. After posting a 1.85 ERA as a junior, he spent the following summer improving his mechanics and believed he was ready for an even better season.
“Over the summer, I’d gotten the best I’d ever been at pitching in my life,” he said. “I was throwing close to 90 (mph), locating my stuff and finally had college coaches texting me — and then that happened.”
“That” was a torn labrum in his right shoulder, which Zakman said he suffered during Week 1 of football season in August 2022. He played through it, recording 56 tackles, including 12 for loss, as the Wildcats went undefeated until losing in a Class 3A sectional championship game.
After the season, a visit to a doctor revealed that Zakman did all of that with a 75% tear of the labrum. The injury required surgery, which sidelined him for the baseball season.
“That was a pain deep down inside for a while,” he said.
Missing that season motivated Zakman to resume playing after he graduated from Hanover Central, and he went to South Suburban with hopes of extending his career beyond the two-year college. He started throwing again in August, and South Suburban pitcher Ivan Balboa, a 2022 Hobart graduate, said Zakman’s arm talent was obvious.
“He was back at 100%, and he was pretty dominant,” Balboa said. “Our coaches saw right away that he was going to be a good pitcher.”
Zakman has also been a valuable resource for Balboa, who had surgery to repair a torn labrum in his right shoulder in September.
“That’s all we talked about when I got injured,” Balboa said. “He told me his story, and his thought was that, every single day, he’d just work toward getting better and getting back to where he was.”
Zakman is well past that recovery stage and is focused on continued improvement to guide him through the rest of the summer with the Corn Dogs, next season at South Suburban and whatever baseball chapters remain beyond that.
“I’m just trying to get as comfortable as I can with my pitches,” he said. “To keep learning and get myself into a good college program after next year.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter.