Schoch nears Head of the Charles finish line
Someone once had an F.O.F. button (Friend of Fred) made up, hoping that it would provide unlimited access at the Head of the Charles Regatta. “I know Fred.” That’s what thousands of his closest acquaintances insisted to skeptical gatekeepers, trying to get into a cocktail party or hospitality tent or overflowing parking lot.
If executive director Fred Schoch was the man to see it was because he was the only man to see. When he came on board in 1991, he was the regatta’s first full-time employee. His predecessor, the elusive Charles Attager (regatta in reverse), was both unpaid and unreal.
The regatta founders and top officials had day jobs so all queries were referred to Attager, who conveniently happened to be elsewhere whenever the phone rang at the Cambridge Boat Club.
Schoch was brought in to be Attager in mortal form. Although the Head, launched in 1965, was and still is a volunteer-driven enterprise it had grown so large that it needed professional staff at the top.
“I was the right guy at the right time,” said Schoch, who had coached collegiate and national teams and had just created another Head race, the “Challenge of the Hudson” in New York.
His time on the Charles has lasted for more than three decades and will end next spring when Schoch clicks off the stopwatch and retires.
“It’s been quite a ride,” Schoch mused before the announcement was made Monday evening and the board of directors began an international search for his successor.
The river hasn’t changed but everything else about the regatta has. What was a one-day event now covers three. What were 3,500 competitors now are nearly 12,000 from 30 countries. More than 400,000 spectators line the banks to watch.
“Fred created an incredible destination regatta over the course of his tenure,” board chair Tim Fulham said.
What the Boston Marathon is to the road runner the Head has become to the rower. If you haven’t hung the Weeks turn without running up on the rocks your resume is incomplete.
Schoch had much to do with making the Charles a mandatory experience.
Of all the hats that he wore simultaneously the most important was that of rainmaker. Schoch had a gift for convincing companies like J. Crew and Volkswagen that an event that televises poorly and whose athletes perform going backward while sitting down would provide a return on investment.
He was a persuasive salesman on the dock, too, getting athletes from New Zealand and the Netherlands and points between to get themselves on a plane a month after the world championships for a windy weekend in Boston, racing three miles upstream between a bunch of bridges.
Schoch is one of them, after all. His father, Dutch, was a spare for the “Boys in the Boat” crew that won the 1936 Olympics. He rowed for Washington and has won an armful of Head crowns with Team Attager in the master eights.
What remains alluring about the Head is that it has room for the Olympian and the octogenarian. Making space is what the planet’s largest regatta does best. When one day wasn’t enough the organizers went to two, then three.
Under Schoch’s direction the HOCR continually has identified, accommodated and, thus, validated the trends of an expanding sport. The regatta has full gender equity now and multiple para races. Veterans, masters, alumni, and youth events continue to grow. This year prize money was offered for the elite scullers.
“We have been the template for probably close to 150 regattas in the US,” Schoch said. “To be a pioneer in this sport, to be a leader, that’s been really rewarding for me and the staff and the board.”
The Head’s brand now is global.
“If you go through an airport somewhere in the world and you’re wearing something from the Head of the Charles someone will say, did you row in that?” Schoch said. “They’ll know what it is. Someone sent me a picture from deep in Africa of a guy on an elephant wearing a J. Crew windbreaker. Our volunteer swag goes everywhere.”
An event that has been wiped out twice — in 1996 by the on-cein-100-years storm and in 2020 by the pandemic — now is back at full power.
“The regatta’s in great shape,” Schoch said. “It’s going to flourish in the future and I’m so excited to have brought it this far.”
This is far enough, he reckoned.
“I’ve worked well past normal retirement age,” Schoch, who is 73, said. “You hate to take your hand off the tiller but on the other hand I’ve had some personal headwinds. I lost my partner (Katie) and several of my best rowing friends. You see the sand in the hourglass running faster . . . I never knew either one of my grandfathers and my father died in his 50s. I want my grandchildren to know who I am.”
Schoch has refreshed his resume, which last was submitted in the pre-e-mail era.
“I want to keep working and I will,” he said. “I’ll be involved in rowing somewhere, somehow . . . I’ll be around.
“I’m not going to go anywhere.”