'I got played': Rochester native Sarah Wade voted off 'Survivor'

Rebecca Mitchell, Post-Bulletin, Rochester, Minn.
·2 min read

Mar. 22—FIJI — Sarah Wade ended her

"Survivor" dream

without a "magical" tribal council.

"All you have is what you're telling people and hope they trust it. And that you're in on the plan," Wade said about trust with her fellow castaways on the islands of Fiji. Wade is a Mayo High School graduate.

Tribe Tika, including Wade, Carolyn Wiger, Yamil 'Yam Yam' Arocho and Josh Wilder, split the tribe's trust bonds wide open in their second tribal council of season 44. While Wilder needed to gain trust quickly after a tribe switch, Wade also suspected she was near the bottom of the tribe following a

broken alliance

in the second episode.

As the doubts rolled in, Arocho turned to their

initial family bond

with a vote of confidence in Wade and Wiger. And Wade hoped for the "magical" vote of sending Wilder home.

After nine days in the competition, Wade is the fourth female voted off this season. A paper titled "

Surviving Racism and Sexism: What Votes in the Television Program Survivor Reveal About Discrimination

" says both women and Black, Indigenous and people of color contestants are "more likely to be voted out of their tribe first and are less likely to make it to the individual-competition stage of the game." In seasons 41 to 44, the

first 10 out of 12 castaways voted off

have been women, according to Entertainment Weekly.

"I think working in a male-dominated field has really taught me how to work with a lot of different personalities that kind of have different views on what they think of me coming in. They might be very open-minded and cool about it but they might also be more traditional and not accustomed to seeing a young gal at work with them," Wade said before the competition started. "I think figuring out how to win over people's trust and what I can bring to the table is valuable for 'Survivor.'"

At the tribe's first tribal council, Wade said a tribe's strength is being with people you trust.

"I kept trying to tell myself not to worry and held onto the idol," Wade said in her exit comments. "I got played."