Classes at Miramonte High in Orinda began Monday. There’s a good chance Hailey Mead won’t be at her desk.
“I’m probably going to be there a little late,” she said.
The 17-year-old spent the past week and a half in Tokyo representing the United States at the 2019 World Rowing Junior Championships, which began this past Wednesday and concluded Sunday.
Her previous international travel experience included a race in Canada and a few vacations in Central America.
“I haven’t been overseas,” said Mead, before taking off for Japan on Aug. 31. “I don’t know how I’m going to do on this flight, but we’ll see. Thirteen hours, that will be a little bit crazy.”
By now, Mead should be accustomed to long treks.
Thursday mornings as a junior at Miramonte began with her alarm going off at 4 a.m., after which a 45-minute commute to the Port of Redwood City awaited a two-hour practice with the Redwood Scullers — formerly Stanford Rowing Center — where she trained for a couple of weeks the previous summer.
“We have a very liberal drop-in policy and she knew a couple of kids on the team,” Redwood Scullers head coach Monica Hilcu said. “And I thought, ‘Isn’t this great? It was great seeing her.’ And then when she approached me about coming over, I kind of looked at her and said, ‘You live in Orinda, right?’
“And she’s like, ‘Yeah.’ ”
The roughly 100-mile round trip ends at 8 a.m., when she arrives on campus for classes.
On Wednesdays, the commute nearly doubles in time as she spends close to three hours on the road in order to attend an afternoon practice — leaving Miramonte at 3 p.m. only to return home at 8.
“I try not to go to as many after-school practices in Redwood City because the traffic gets bad,” Mead said.
“It’s a long haul for her,” said her father, James, who rowed at Cal and is a USRowing referee. “So it’s a lot of commitment on her part as a teenager to be able to do that.”
On weekends, she’ll train with the Redwood Scullers from 7 a.m. to noon.
Hilcu’s regimen for Haley in Redwood City consists of increased minutes and meters on the water with an emphasis on more aerobic and cardio rowing.
At home, Mead works out by herself on the treadmill and ergometer, an indoor rowing machine, while weight lifting with a trainer twice a week.
“I have to choose how much extra work I want to put in,” Mead said. “And I can kind of personalize the work that I want to do.”
Genetics certainly are in her favor.
Haley and older brother Kevin were both born at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford as their father, who grew up in Piedmont, lived in Menlo Park and worked on the Peninsula for a little bit over a decade beginning in 1995.
Kevin is a graduate of Piedmont High and is a 6-foot-6, 200-pound sophomore at UC San Diego, where he’s obviously on the rowing team.
Haley, who spent five years in Idaho, was introduced to the sport as a 10-year-old at Artemis Rowing Club in Oakland. She competed on the middle school program in the lightweight double sculls for a couple of years, but when her partner graduated Mead shifted to the Oakland Strokes Rowing Club, where her brother trained.
Mead qualified for youth nationals by the age of 13 and a year later earned a silver medal. Hilcu remembers catching her first glimpse of the now 5-foot-11 rower during a competition in spring of 2016.
“You could just see it in the way she walks and the way she’s on the rowing machine, she’s just one of those natural athletes,” Hilcu said. “And with her long arms and legs, it makes her a perfect fit for rowing.”
A back injury suffered the summer after her freshman year led to the switch from sweeping with one oar for the Oakland Strokes to a renewed focus on sculling with two oars.
“I think it was time for me to move,” Mead said. “I thought it might be best to go back to sculling because the symmetry is a little bit easier. In sweeping you have to rotate your back and I didn’t think that would be too great for recovery.”
Healthy and thriving, Mead finished first in the single, third in the double and first in the quad for the Redwood Scullers at the USRowing Southwest Regionals in May. A month later at nationals, her boat in the women’s quadruple sculls took runner-up.
Mead, one of only 27 rowers chosen out of the USRowing U19 Selection Camp, trained in two-a-day practices at Princeton while bonding with the rest of her crew — Graciella Leon out of Florida, Brenna Morley out of Iowa and Audrey Lyda out of Pennsylvania — before flying out to Tokyo.
“You kind of know of the people just because you’ve been racing them over the past couple of years,” Mead said. “But most of the people in my quad are from different parts of the country.”
Father and brother joined her in Japan as Haley & Co. finished 12th overall on Sunday after placing sixth in the “B” final.
She plans to take time off during the first week of school before resuming training, not to mention the 100-mile round trips from Orinda to Redwood City and back.
“It’s a lot of dedication, but I love the sport a lot,” said Mead, who’s narrowed down her list of colleges and plans to go on official visits in the fall. “It’s all I’ve ever known, really. So it’s definitely worth it.”
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