Ruby Remati closes Ohio State career on top, but her story isn’t finished

Jack Diwik
Thu, 09 Apr 2026 01:42:21 +0000
Artistic Swimming, Instagram Page, News, Sports, 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, artistic swimming nationals, Ohio State artistic swimming, Ohio State athlete feature, Ohio State Buckeyes, Olympic silver medalist, Olympic trials 2026, Ruby Remati, U.S. Collegiate Championships, USA artistic swimming

Artistic Swimming Athletes spell out “O-H-I-O” in the pool. Credit: Ohio State Athletics

Ohio State’s duet stood poolside, waiting.

Ruby Remati and Kiana Hunter had just finished their final routine together, a four-minute performance set to “Sign of the Times” by Harry Styles. Now came the hardest part: waiting for the score.

Outside the pool, head coach Holly Vargo-Brown tried to keep her composure. She usually does.

This time, she couldn’t.

“I’ve never seen my head coach cry like that,” Remati said.

In that moment, it felt like everything had come together.

Remati and Hunter scored 264.0933 to win the duet national title March 29 at the U.S. Collegiate Championships in Stanford, Calif. Remati also won the A figure event, marking the first time an Ohio State athlete swept both titles at the same meet since she did so in 2023 alongside Emily Armstrong.

For Remati, an Olympic silver medalist, the moment felt like a fitting close to a career that had taken her to the sport’s highest level and back.

“I would personally consider her one percent of Buckeyes at Ohio State,” Vargo-Brown said. “Our program is different because she came here.”

Born in Sydney, Australia, Remati moved to Andover, Mass., as a child. She discovered artistic swimming at a local YMCA when she was five, initially drawn in by the sport’s sparkly costumes. What began as curiosity quickly turned into commitment.

By 14, she had earned a spot as the youngest swimmer on the U.S. senior national team, but the opportunity came with a decision. Remati and her family left Massachusetts and moved to California so she could train full-time.

Her days became structured around the sport: training from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., followed by online school, with little room for anything else.

She quickly developed into one of the top artistic swimmers in the country and a highly sought-after recruit. She could have chosen any of the 35 schools that offer the sport at the collegiate level. She only applied to one.

“My granddad was a Buckeye, so growing up he was always talking about how amazing it is here,” Remati said. “Once I came on my visit, I could feel the energy of it, and I just knew this was where I wanted to be.”

Remati arrived in Columbus and made an immediate impact. As a freshman in 2022, she helped Ohio State win a national championship in front of a home crowd in Columbus. She won again as a sophomore in 2023, taking the duet title alongside Armstrong.

Then came another major decision.

After her sophomore season, Remati stepped away from the Buckeyes to pursue the 2024 Paris Olympics. She had narrowly missed the previous cycle, qualifying the duet event but ultimately serving as the alternate.

This time, she was going back with one goal.

“I wanted to see how far I could go,” she said.

Nothing was guaranteed. Athletes were evaluated constantly, and roster spots could change at any time. Remati did not know if she had made the Olympic team until about a month before the Games. Her parents were still asking whether to book flights when she told them she honestly was not sure yet.

She earned her spot on the roster and helped the United States win a silver medal in Paris, a result she said she had not even let herself think about before the Games began.

“It was probably the most difficult, transformative year of my life,” Remati said. “That training was the hardest thing I’ve experienced.”

Within a week of competing, it was her birthday. She was back in Columbus, sitting in a basement math class.

“I was just in Paris a week ago,” she said. “It felt really weird being back in class like that.”

But while Remati was away, both the team and the sport had shifted. A new scoring system had been introduced, one that required athletes to declare every movement in advance, with entire sequences thrown out if execution deviated even slightly from what was submitted. Ohio State lost multiple national team athletes to Olympic training, leaving younger swimmers to take on larger roles. The Buckeyes finished fourth that season.

When Remati returned in 2025, she helped the team work through the new system, breaking down where points were being lost, refining underwater sequences and adjusting timing.

“There was definitely an excitement,” Vargo-Brown said. “Like, here we go. We have the missing parts.”

And while the Buckeyes finished third at nationals, Remati brought home another A figure title but fell short of a duet title.

Entering her final collegiate season in 2026, Remati saw it begin the way she hoped it would.

Remati and Hunter opened the year by winning the duet at the UIW Invitational in February, an early sign of what was possible. But from the start, both knew they were building toward something bigger.

When the calendar turned to March and nationals approached, they understood what would be required. The performance had to match the moment.

They chose “Sign of the Times” for a reason.

“We wanted something a little more emotional, more dramatic,” Remati said. “The lyrics kind of talk to both of us about how we’re starting to enter the end of our athletic career, potentially, and my time here at Ohio State.”

The night before the duet final, neither of them slept much. Both kept waking up and running through the routine in their heads before drifting off again.

When the score came up, Vargo-Brown started crying, the coaches started screaming and the team started jumping, Remati felt the weight of it all at once.

“It was just a really special moment,” Remati said. “We were all just so happy it worked out the way it did.”

The duet had always been her favorite collegiate event. She had won it with Armstrong in 2023. This time, she wanted Hunter to feel that same moment.

“I wanted Kiana to feel that same moment that I did,” Remati said.

And now that her collegiate career is over, for Remati, the next step is already set.

She will compete in Olympic trials in early May. If she makes the national team, she will walk at graduation May 10, pack up and leave Columbus almost immediately to begin training again.

Plan A, she calls it, without hesitation.

Plan B, “the big girl job,” as she puts it, is there if she needs it, but it is not where her focus is.

“I always joke with everyone that I have Plan A through Z,” she said. “But right now, I’m going for it.”