THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507230205
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TOM ROBINSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: DENVER LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
It's no act. Scott Walsh, who while at Norfolk's Maury High School learned about life on stage, now has stars in his eyes of a different sort. They involve sports, specifically competitive rowing and the Olympics, which four years ago would have been as ridiculous a storyline as Walsh could have imagined for himself.
Walsh is the Accidental Athlete; the 1994 Yale graduate who came in from the academic wilds, forfeited the footlights for his lightweight double scull and eventual inclusion, he hopes, among his sport's elite.
It is all to Walsh's wonder, and delight. For rowing has gripped him enough that Walsh, 23, has delayed a career in environmental geology, in which he holds a degree, for the measly pay of part-time assistant coaching at George Mason University and full-time training.
Gone from Norfolk's Larchmont neighborhood since '90, though he visits often, Walsh by necessity has moved in with his parents in the Washington area. His headquarters this weekend, however, are a dorm at the University of Colorado, where Walsh is competing in the Olympic Festival, surrounded by, believe it or not, his type of people.
Athletes.
``My freshman year at Yale, I remember the coach telling us on the first day, `Look around at these guys. They're going to be your best friends,' '' said Walsh, who began rowing after an acquaintance suggested he ``looked like an oarsman.''
``I thought, `I don't like jocks, I don't want to hang out with these guys.' But rowers are a little different from the athletes I'd met in Connecticut. They're pretty nice, and easy to get along with.''
Walsh, the son of Navy submarine captain Neil Walsh, spent ninth and 10th grades in Connecticut and as a sophomore tried football and basketball. But after moving back to Norfolk before his junior year, he played no sports and instead spent countless extracurricular hours studying theater, first in the Norfolk public schools' performing arts repertory, then the Governor's Magnet School.
His heart set on Yale for years, Walsh, among the top students in his Maury class, heaped his plate so high as a freshman that drama fell away. He was in ROTC, joined a folk group in which he played guitar and sang, dived into his studies and started rowing.
As a junior, Walsh was on the varsity lightweight boat, but, bypassed by better athletes, he was dropped to junior varsity as a senior. That boat won a national JV sprint championship, but Walsh didn't seem to figure as a possible future Olympian.
He does now, and he explains it simply as an experiment in desire.
``The whole rowing thing, I just kind of wondered if anybody could make it to the Olympics if they worked hard enough for it,'' said Walsh, a sculler for only a year because Yale only competed in sweep rowing. ``In college I definitely wasn't one of the guys who picked it up naturally. But I've been training really, really hard to prove that just about anybody, if they work hard enough, can do it.''
Walsh, who with partner Eric Edmonds was sixth in the recent national championships in Georgia, has no delusions about rocketing onto the 1996 Olympic team. But he's not sure 2000 is out of the question.
That the Olympics and Walsh's name can be mentioned in one sentence might stun people who remember him from Maury. But Walsh said his place in the Festival field is a true measure of the level to which he's risen.
``The people here are not quite Olympic caliber yet, but there's potential there,'' said Walsh who, at 6-foot-2, drops about a dozen pounds to 160 to row lightweights. ``The coaches know which athletes are good, they have an idea of the pool from which they're drawing. I'm probably at the bottom of that pool.''
Without his rowing, the only pools Walsh might find himself in are those he'd come across working for the Environmental Protection Agency or a private engineering firm. And that day will come, Walsh said. Just not today.
``I'll be able to work for one of those companies 10 years from now, I hope,'' Walsh said. ``In 10 years I doubt I'll still be rowing. Now's the time.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Scott Walsh, right, rows with Eric Edmonds during the Double Sculls
Rowing Saturday in Westminster, Colo., site of the U.S. Olympic
Festival.
by CNB