HOCR and USRowing Honor Fred Schoch

(Photo by Gregory Zapata)

It was a busy day for Fred Schoch on Saturday. At 9:19 a.m. he rowed in the Men’s Veteran’s Eights (70+) with Team Attager. At 5 o’clock he was back in the awards tent. No racing medal for Attager this year, a somewhat unusual happening for the seven-time champions. Schoch was there instead to receive two honors far more singular than even an HOCR medal.

The HOCR Board of Directors officially announced that the permanent trophy presented to the winner of the Men’s Championship Eights will henceforth be The Fred Schoch Trophy. Shortly thereafter, USRowing presented Schoch with its Medal of Honor, “bestowed upon a member of the rowing community in the U.S. who has rendered conspicuous service to, or accomplished extraordinary feats in, rowing.”

When Schoch first came to the Regatta in 1991, he was the HOCR’s first and, for a time, only full-time employee. The HOCR was a very different competition back then. Before it became the three-day event that it is today (“an extravaganza,” as Schoch put it in an interview) with as many vendors as traffic jams, the Regatta was a growing, albeit still humble one-day affair. “When I started, we weren’t even allowed to sell beer, OK? And now we’re sitting in a beer garden. How ironic is that?”

The organizational process was also very different, in that it was more time intensive. Back in those pre-internet days, snail mail, fax machines and long-distance phone calls were what Schoch had to rely on. But as means of communication grew, so too did the HOCR, thanks to Schoch’s efforts. It is one of the crown jewels of the world rowing calendar, boasting over 12,000 athletes from 30 countries and most states in the union, all cheered on by nearly 400,000 spectators.

He credits some of what he was able to do to what he calls the “good fortune” of being so steeped in rowing culture. He is the son of Delos “Dutch” Schoch, the legendary Princeton coach and the alternate for the U.S. men’s eights team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (the fabled “Boys in the Boat”). “I grew up in the boathouse,” the younger Schoch says. After coaching stints with various colleges and high schools, as well as spells coaching athletes on the national level, Schoch then found himself tasked with growing an event with an annual budget of what he now estimates to have been “about $50,000.”

After nurturing a preexisting relationship with Bay Bank, he courted sponsorship deals with Volkswagen and several airlines, as well as signing J. Crew as an official merchandising partner. Now the HOCR budget is nearly $5 million, while the number of full-time staff sits at five.

Schoch was particularly touched by the naming of the Championship Eights trophy in his name, an honor he now shares with his father, in whose name the trophy going to the winner of the annual Cal-Washington race is given. “I’m really proud to add to the legacy of the Schoch contributions to rowing,” he said in his remarks to the crowd.

He described his time as the Regatta Executive Director as his life’s work and pleasure, and paid tribute to the whole of the HOCR team, declaring that “All truly successful institutions depend on strong leadership with dedicated staff and volunteers, and this event is made possible by literally thousands of dedicated volunteers.” A hundred or more of those volunteers cheered him warmly, knowing that the way he grew the Regatta has made their volunteering possible and necessary.

He remains an active retiree. The day before the Regatta began, he chopped a cord of wood at his New Hampshire home in preparation for the upcoming winter. He still rows almost daily, on the Connecticut River in Hanover, N.H. and on the Charles in Cambridge. He’s working on plans for some regatta-related consulting in China, among other places.

Beyond the consulting, occasional coaching and wood cutting, Schoch says he is most looking forward to spending time with his partner, his two sons (one is based in London while the other lives in West Palm Beach), and his six grandchildren. However, the man with the new title of “Executive Director Emeritus” hinted in his speech that he may not done with life in the rowing work-world. “I’m not ruling out some sort of a comeback.”