by Dave Boehler
Beacon Sports Editor

Los Angeles was nice, but Manhattan is better.

After visiting the University of Southern California, Sheboygan North senior Dru Kuck toured Kansas State in Manhattan, Kan., and decided to play for the Wildcats before she even left the campus in late February.

“During the whole thing, I didn’t have any doubts about it or any second thoughts,”  she said. “The whole time, everything there I loved. There wasn’t one negative thing, from the girls to the staff to just the campus in general.

“Everything just felt right.”

Kuck, who will study Social Sciences, took two official visits and the first was to USC.

“I loved it down there,” she said. “LA is beautiful, the coaches are all great and the campus is beautiful, but just everything at Kansas State clicked together. Even without volleyball, I fell in love with just the school.”

The feeling was mutual, as Kansas State coaches watched Kuck and her Milwaukee Sting volleyball club compete in a tournament in Kansas City a few weeks ago.

On the final day, even a couple of KSU players showed up.

“That was probably the big selling point,” said Chad Kuck, her father and North’s volleyball coach.

Kuck and her club team were then in Atlanta and had just qualified for a national tournament when she hopped on a plane to meet her father in Chicago. From there, the two flew to Manhattan to visit the school.

“There were  a lot of mixed nerves going through me,” she said. “Because I was excited and relieved about qualifying, so that took a whole bunch of weight off my shoulders, but I was also nervous going to a school I’m really interested in and actually seeing it, hoping it goes really well.”

It did, as Dru says she loved it from the moment she arrived.

“The assistant coach came and picked me and my dad up and brought us to the hotel,” she said. “We talked on the car ride and the next day some of the girls picked me up for practice, and it just felt right right away.”

DRU KUCK recently completed her fourth season on the Sheboygan North varsity volleyball team and will continue the sport next year at Kansas State University. – Submitted photo

Kuck finished as North’s all-time leader in digs with 2,097 and she also had 694 as a senior – which ranked fourth in the state – to set the single-season school record.

The libero has been on varsity all four years and she made all-Fox River Classic each season – with the last three being on the first team as well as finishing as co-player of the year this past season.

Kuck, who has been on the Milwaukee Sting since sixth grade, has been named an all-American on the club circuit and will play in the USAV Junior Girls Championship in Dallas in April.