One of the top athletes at Lone Tree High School will be taking on a new challenge next year when she takes part in a sport she’s never tried. Senior Vivian Zaruba had committed to compete for the rowing team at the University of Kansas.

An all-conference athlete in cross country, basketball, softball and track and field for the Lions, Zaruba tells KCII Sports that she got the idea to take part in a new type of competition when Washington graduate Taylor Bartholomew did the same thing last year.

“I heard about a girl from Washington who committed to Drake [University] for rowing, and she’d never rowed before,” Zaruba says, “and then I reached out to a bunch of schools [across] the Midwest, and Kansas, one of their coaches was one of the ones that responded. We started talking, we had a couple phone calls, and then it just led to a visit.”

Once she got to Lawrence, Zaruba says she felt like being a Jayhawk would be the right decision for her future.

“I loved the campus,” she says. “I loved the environment there. It was a big campus, but it still has that small-town feeling. I loved how close the campus was together and just how it didn’t feel busy.”

Zaruba also says that her inexperience in her new sport is actually a benefit, as well as her diverse athletic background while at Lone Tree.

“I asked [the coach] if I should take lessons over the summer,” she says, “and she said she’d rather have me show up as a blank slate, so they can teach me the way they want to teach me. They loved that I was a multi-sport athlete and that I excelled in most of the sports I was in.”

Among Zaruba’s accolades with the Lions are a trip to the cross-country state championships in 2022; two-time All-Super Conference North selections in basketball and softball; multiple all-conference medals for track and field; and multiple individual and team qualifications for state track.

You can hear the full interview with Vivian Zaruba by clicking play on the file below.