Hannah Stewart continues to take steps that she never thought she’d take at Kansas State. Volleyball was her first love. That was in the fourth grade. But she also played basketball and competed in track and field all four years at Lawrence High School. Every year, the sports calendar rolled together like that familiar yoga mat in the backseat of the car. Every season was new. Every event was reason for excitement. And that’s when things became, well, complicated.

 

“When I was getting ready to graduate, people asked, ‘What are you going to do?'” Hannah says. “Some people said, ‘You should go run in college, but I didn’t have a passion for running. I really didn’t think that I loved running enough to do it for four years at the Division I level.”

 

Hannah served up a curveball bigger than her brother Andrew has ever faced as a shortstop on the Wichita State baseball team.

 

“I thought, ‘Why not give rowing a chance,'” she says.

 

Tom and Carolyn Stewart, both Kansas alums, raised Andrew and Hannah in a KU home. Tom played baseball at KU from 1992-93. They had Jayhawk flags, and as such, Hannah grew up booing the Wildcats.

 

When Hannah graduated from Lawrence High School, she delivered another curveball: She headed to Manhattan.

 

“I visited KU and then I visited K-State,” she says. “I just liked the K-State atmosphere, which sounds cliché, but K-State lives out the word ‘family.’ We do a great job making everyone feel included. I like Lawrence, but Manhattan is a slightly better version of Lawrence.”

 

Hannah loved her K-State rowing coaches and teammates, but her rowing career lasted only a few days.

 

“I realized that my position, the coxswain, was the member of the team who didn’t row but rather steered the boat,” she says. “It wasn’t physically taxing, and I’d been used to physically-taxing sports. I needed more.”

 

So, at around 9:30 p.m. on August 25, 2019, Hannah wrote an e-mail to K-State cross country head coach Ryun Godfrey that read: “Hi Coach. My name is Hannah Stewart. I’d like to come by your office and meet with you. Would you have 10 minutes in the morning to meet? I have a class at 10:30 a.m. If not, would you have to meet at some point tomorrow? I appreciate your consideration.”

 

Godfrey met with her that next morning. That afternoon, he told her, “Welcome to the team.” Godfrey had already seen in Hannah what she had yet to see in herself. He watched her run the 800 meters in 2:17 at the KSHAA State Track & Field Championships. Hannah had never run cross country. That was about to change.  

 

“I was watching the 800-meter finals and this girl came out of nowhere to run a 2:17, and I thought, ‘Shoot, she’s a pretty good runner,'” Godfrey says. “But she was a rowing recruit, so I just let it go. Then she e-mailed me about possibly walking-on to our program. We’ve had other athletes with similar marks who ended up really developing when they came to the college level and spent more time just focused on running.

 

“I thought, ‘OK, there might be something there,’ but I didn’t know that Hannah was going to be this good.”

 

Hannah dove into it.

 

“It wasn’t necessarily daunting,” she says. “It was more exciting. It was great that he gave me an opportunity to race at the Division I level. My mindset was let’s go compete and grind it out and see what I can do.”

 

Most recently, Hannah, a junior, finished second on the team and 33^rd overall with a time of 22:28.7 in the women’s 6K at the Cowboy Jamboree at the OSU Cross Country Course in Stillwater, Oklahoma, on September 18. Then on October 1, she finished second on the team and 15th overall with a personal best 21:28.6 in the women’s 6K at the Gans Creek Classic at the Gans Creek Cross Country Course in Columbia, Missouri. This comes after she finished 32^nd overall with a time of 22:20.o at the Big 12 Championships last October in Lawrence.

 

And now? Well, Thursday at 4:30 a.m., Hannah is headed with her K-State teammates to Tallahassee, Florida, to compete at the Pre-National Invitational at 7:35 a.m. Friday. It is her final meet before the Big 12 Championships on October 29 in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

 

“It’s surreal to step back,” she says. “It’s crazy to look back and think I came to K-State to row, and now I’m leaving for Tallahassee to run in cross country. I still catch myself like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ I sometimes forget that I didn’t originally come to K-State to run. K-State did such a great job of building that foundation of running into my life. I overlooked running and never thought that it was something I wanted to continue.”

 

Hannah has become accustomed to her schedule. She competes in cross country September through November, takes a short break, then competes in indoor track and field December through February, then takes another break, and competes in outdoor track and field March through May.

 

Last February, she finished fourth overall in the one-mile run with a time of 4:58.39 to earn 6 points for K-State in the 2021 Big 12 Indoor Track and Field Championships in Lubbock, Texas.

 

“I had the mindset of not necessarily focusing on a certain time but finishing high enough so I could earn our team some points,” she says. “We got through half of the race, and it was a pretty slow pace. I thought, ‘Go now. I still have something left in the tank.’ And I finished well. It was a learning process and super exciting.”

 

However, not much matches her thrill in competing in the 3,000-meter steeplechase during the outdoor track and field season. It’s an event that she approached with curiosity, which turned into elation.

 

“She’s fallen in love with steeplechase,” Godfrey says.

 

Hannah finished fourth 3,000-meter steeplechase with a time of 10:32.17 at the 2021 Big 12 Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Manhattan this past May.

 

“I can’t thank him enough because I love it,” she says. “Everyone asks my favorite event. Between cross country, indoor and outdoor track, I tell them, ‘The steeplechase.’ The grittiness of the race, the barriers and water just add more to the sport instead of simply running. I love it. It’s so much fun. I’m still learning a lot about it, but I hope that I can help score points in the future in it at the big meets.”

 

On Friday, it’s all about Tallahassee, and trying to fine tune before the Big 12 Cross Country Championships later in the month.

 

“I’m super excited for Tallahassee,” she says. “This will be a good test. I’m going to try and get a personal best in every race. I’m not going to save anything in the tank. I’m going to give it my hardest effort.”

 

Whether it be volleyball, basketball, rowing, the 800 meters, the mile run, the steeplechase, or anything in between, Hannah has gone all out all her life. When she looks back on her path, it really isn’t that complicated.

 

“This has been nothing short of amazing,” she says. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”