As a three-sport star, Shayla Dvorak wasn’t exactly a couch potato in high school. Playing volleyball, basketball and running track, Dvorak was active throughout the year while attending Mishicot High School. After winning her volleyball team’s Pride, Hustle, and Desire Award as a junior and being named MVP of the track team as a senior, Dvorak came to Madison looking at a new sport to try.

“I kind of started thinking about it right in the summer before I was a freshman and looked it up on the website,” Dvorak said. “And I saw rowing, and I saw that they had walk-ons, and I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I should try out for that. There’s no way it can be that hard.’”

Little did she know Wisconsin crew would be one of the toughest undertakings of her life.

“I signed up at SOAR and came down to the meeting and (coach Bebe Bryans) was there and said, ‘This is going to be the hardest thing you will ever do, I promise,’” Dvorak said.

Despite Dvorak’s initial underestimation of the sport, Bryans noted something right away about the walk-on.

“She was pretty fierce, right from the beginning,” Bryans said. “I think, her freshman year, she lived here (at the boathouse). She had a great work ethic.”  

Sure enough, through her hard work, Dvorak has blossomed into the captain of Wisconsin’s B boat. The role of captain is not something new to her, however. With six younger siblings in her family, Dvorak has taken to leadership roles throughout her life. In addition to being the oldest child, she has tutored other students in school since she was younger and also has coached in summer sports camps.

“Everyone has different wants and needs and interests, stuff like that, so that dynamic in coming to rowing as a team captain is really cool because it has really helped me problem solve and help people get better because I can use my past experience,” Dvorak said.

“She tends to be inclusive of people,” Bryans said. “One thing that she’s been able to help lead seniors with is that nurturing the whole team instead of holding anyone down and just holding everyone up.”

Although Dvorak is clearly a leader, she is very soft-spoken, far from an in-your-face, out-loud captain.

“She was pretty quiet,” Bryans said of Dvorak. “She’s steady, incredibly steady. That’s an incredibly important quality.”

“I think I’m pretty competitive,” Dvorak said. “I probably come across as… not? Until you get to know me, I’ll get pretty comfortable, and then I get competitive, especially this time of year. But yeah, I probably come across as not, at first.”

Though relatively quiet, there is no question Dvorak has a positive effect on her team and definitely deserves her captain’s status on the B boat.

“I think she has a pretty high standard of what she wants the team to accomplish,” Bryans said. “She’s willing to stand up to people to uphold the standard that everyone decided they wanted, and that is what leadership is.”

Bryans even went as far as to say that one of the words she most closely relates to Dvorak is “fierce.”

Obviously, the results don’t lie. In competition over the weekend in Ann Arbor, Mich., the UW women’s openweight crew took second place in the Big Ten Championships, improving from their fifth place finish last year at the same event. The boat Dvorak rowed in took first place in their finals race Saturday afternoon, beating the second place nationally ranked Ohio State boat by just under a second. Wisconsin is well on its way to finishing well this season, Dvorak’s last.

“I have a lot of Wisconsin pride. I dreamt about being a Badger my whole life,” Dvorak said of her time as a Wisconsin rower. “The history of Wisconsin rowing is one of the best parts. It’s really cool to just be a part of that.”