![\"Harrison](\"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/06\/Harrison-King-6.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nHarrison King, right, helping to carry an 8-shell to Dexter Lake for Covered Bridge Regatta<\/p>\n
By \u00a0Terry Mosher<\/p>\n
Editor, Sports Paper<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Oddly enough, the first question asked of Harrison King was not as unusual as it was thought to be. Turns out plenty of people over the years have asked the Bainbridge High School senior if he was named after famed actor Harrison Ford.<\/p>\n
\u201cI get that a lot from people I meet,\u201d says King, adding he was not named after Ford. \u201cThey (parents Robert Christopher and Robin King) just liked the name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bainbridge Island Rowing likes the name a lot, too. King was an important crewmember on the heavyweight fours that recently raced in US Rowing Association\u2019s Northwest Regional finals on Vancouver Lake. The team placed fifth out of six boats and did not quality for the Junior Nationals this weekend in Oak Ridge, Tenn, although three other BIR boats did. \u00a0However, only the varsity girl\u2019s eights and the boy\u2019s lightweight fours will race in Tennessee.<\/p>\n
King started rowing in the 8th<\/sup> grade and performed so well for the heavyweight fours that he will now move on and try to walk-on at the University of Washington to row for a Husky program that is currently the best in the nation.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is a super solid kid,\u201d says Bruce Beall, coach of the BIR boy\u2019s who knows what he talks about as a former USA Olympian rower who resides in the Washington Husky Hall of Fame for his oarsman skills. \u201cHe is one of our best technically correct rowers. He just rows incredibly well.\u201d<\/p>\n When Beall uses solid in the same breath as King it\u2019s with more good reason than just rowing. King carries a 3.95 grade-point average and though his church \u2013 Rolling Bay Presbyterian \u2013 has gone on summer mission trips to South Dakota, Colorado, Mexico and Arizona and this summer will head out to another one, this to West Virginia.<\/p>\n And he doesn\u2019t stop there. King plays electric guitar and sometimes drums, when the regular drummer doesn\u2019t show, at Sunday church service.<\/p>\n \u201cI have not had lessons on the drums,\u201d says King. \u201cMy brother wanted a drum set a couple years ago, but didn\u2019t play them The drums are nothing fancy, and I\u2019m not nearly as good on them as I am on guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n As he has with music, King has kind of found his own way in a boat. He played baseball and football and in the eighth grade his parents suggested he would be a good fit to be a rower.<\/p>\n \u201cThey thought I would have potential in the sport,\u201d says King. \u201cMy dad told \u00a0me I\u2019m built to be a rower.\u201d<\/p>\n Turns out they were right.<\/p>\n He tried it that year and really liked it. He rowed on the novice boat with older kids \u2013 freshman and sophomores at Bainbridge High School \u2013 and really fell in love with what was a good team dynamic.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember being a little scared at first, but it was cool how they welcomed you in as part of a team,\u201d says King. \u201cIt was a bit scary rowing with high-schoolers and them taking in an eighth-grader like me. That was cool.\u201d<\/p>\n King continued to play baseball and football \u2013 he was a pitcher\/first baseman\/catcher and an offensive lineman \u2013 and rowed just that one year as an eighth-grader through his sophomore year at Bainbridge.<\/p>\n Then he decided to give up football. \u00a0It was a tough decision because many of his friends were playing.<\/p>\n \u201cThey didn\u2019t want me to stop playing football,\u201d King says. \u201cThat summer, right before my junior year, I spend the whole time working out with the team to get ready for the season. I really thought about it and decided football wasn\u2019t really for me. It wasn\u2019t exactly the sport I enjoyed doing the most. I thought baseball was that for me.\u201d<\/p>\n So he told his parents he would give rowing a second chance. So that fall and winter he was on the varsity crew, and discovered it was a lot of fun. Even though he didn\u2019t have the experience others had, he made the varsity eight.<\/p>\n King\u2019s inexperience didn\u2019t show up on the erg test that rowing coaches use to make decisions on who earns a seat in a boat. \u00a0He was good on the erg machine.<\/p>\n \u201cThe great thing about rowing is on rowing the erg (machine) you get that instant feedback,\u201d King says. \u201cThe numbers are right in front of you. The only thing I was lacking was the experience and that began to show up in the winter.\u201d<\/p>\n King wasn\u2019t ready to quit baseball yet, so he played baseball in the spring of his junior. The spring is the main rowing season, and Beall wasn\u2019t too happy.<\/p>\n \u201cHe did a good job in the fall (and winter) and then he went and played baseball,\u201d says Beall. \u201cI was quite disappointed.\u201d<\/p>\n But the \u00a0then six-foot-thee, 220-pound King came back out this past fall and again was rock solid as a rower, losing 30 pounds through the spring season.<\/p>\n \u201cHe rowed on our main boat on the starboard side,\u201d says Beall, noting once again King was steady and consistent.<\/p>\n King\u2019s efforts led Beall to believe he had NCAA D-1 potential.<\/p>\n \u201cRowing in college is a fantastic experience for kids, \u201csays Beall, who rowed at Washington and was on the 1984 US Olympic Rowing Team. \u201cI encourage many of my kids to continue on college rowing. (King) was wavering about trying it and I believed he really could be a good competitor there, and should try it.\u201d<\/p>\n So Beall took him, as he has others, to a UW rowing practice. They rode in the launch and then King went to classes with one of the crew.<\/p>\n \u201cWe caught the 4:40 a.m. ferry boat, went to practice and he introduced me to the coach and the team,\u201d said King, who had to pinch himself to prove this was all real.<\/p>\n Afterward, some of the seniors who were in the engineering program took time to talk to him and give him a tour of the campus. He wound up going to classes and came away believing he could do this \u2013 row for the Huskies.<\/p>\n \u201cThey have their own national championship and that was a little daunting for me,\u201d King said. \u201cBut it really was a good experience, and that sealed the deal. Next year I will try and walk-on with them at the U-dub.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m just so glad Bruce Beall saw the potential in me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Harrison King, right, helping to carry an 8-shell to Dexter Lake for Covered Bridge Regatta By \u00a0Terry Mosher Editor,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":173,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=175"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":179,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175\/revisions\/179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}