Schofield ends junior rowing career with silver lining

With nothing on his agenda until the start of classes later this month at Harvard University, Harrison Schofield hung around Tokyo a few extra days following the 2019 World Rowing Junior Championships “to explore Japan a little bit.”

Then it was back to Sarasota for a couple weeks before a flight into Boston’s Logan Airport, a short drive over the bridge to Cambridge and the start of the 18-year-old’s next excellent adventure.

Schofield’s first one just ended.

“I am so in disbelief that everything is kind of finished,” he said. “I’m done with the Sarasota Crew and my junior rowing, but I’m more excited than I am saddened by that because I know I have so much more rowing to come.

“It blows my mind that I’m going to be attending Harvard and be able to race for them.”

The Crimson coaching staff knows the caliber of rower it will be getting. Three straight appearances on the U.S. junior national team should be stamped in big bold letters atop Schofield’s resume.

The rowers this year in the American men’s eight boat arrived from all over — Orinda, California; Culver, Indiana; Arlington, Massachusetts; Houston, Texas.

And one 5-foot-10, 165-pounder from Sarasota who followed seven years ago older brother John onto the water, an almost natural occurrence if one attended the Pine View School.

“You try the sport at least once just because it’s so close to our school,” Harrison said.

With Schofield in his customary stroke seat, the Americans earned the silver medal Sunday, finishing a little more than four seconds behind the gold-medal winning team from Germany.

“On a close race you definitely think about what you could have done differently,” he said. “But most of the time your final is the best race you’ve put together all summer or all season. You’re usually pretty content with how you’ve placed just because you do realize how hard it is to medal.”

If “most of the time” included last year’s junior world championships in the Czech Republic, then Schofield was content with his men’s eight team winning silver.

The year before, not so much. In 2017 Schofield’s squad in the men’s coxless 4 finished 16th. “We had some illness that we had to deal with,” he said, “but that’s just how it goes sometimes.”

Still, if three consecutive appearances on our junior national team seem impressive, that’s because it is. Each of those years Schofield had to withstand a selection process during which 80 rowers were culled to the final 20.

“After that,” he said, “they separated the guys into our boat class and we probably trained close to a month. Every day, twice a day.”

That was on the international stage. With Schofield in the stroke seat of the 8, the Sarasota Crew won gold at last year’s USRowing Youth National Championships. This year the 8’s took home silver.

And just what are the responsibilities of the stroke? He’s the rower closest to the stern of the boat. “Looking right at the coxswain,” Schofield said. He sets the stroke rate and the cadence for the rest of the crew. When he puts his blade into the water, the seven other rowers must follow exactly his lead. Often the stroke is the most technically sound member of the boat.

“A big part of the sport is you have people who can work with the stroke’s rhythm and translate it through the rest of the boat all the way to the guy who’s 50 feet behind you,” he said.

A rower sent over from central casting stands around 6-4 and has a reach capable of pulling down coconuts.

At 5-10, Schofield doesn’t fit the profile. So he has to adjust.

“The biggest thing is I have to change how I row more than they do because they can get the longer stroke,” he said. “So I would have to work on my flexibility and being able to compress my body into a smaller, tighter position so I could get further out from the handle.”

After taking visits to Harvard, Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania, Schofield settled on the Crimson. Spending a couple days tagging along with Harvard rowers and accompanying them to class and practice was the clincher.

“I bonded with the team and how the coaches were doing their jobs and how I enjoyed the campus and the surrounding area,” he said.

At Harvard Schofield will be tested. Tested on the ergometer rowing machine. Tested on the water.

“Just trying to figure out where I belong,” he said. “But it’s the same exact process that I’ve gone through at the Sarasota Crew and for the junior team selections. So just gotta do what you keep doing.”

The results are in: why change a thing?