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Matt Scherer's Passing Leaves A Void In Our LivesPublished by
RunnerSpace Employees Share Thoughts On Death Of COO And Dear Friend By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor We were all in his slipstream. Matt Scherer drew satisfaction from making his team better and deflecting the credit. It's a thread that ran throughout his life. Over eight years of working with him, I learned that he carried his weight and was willing to pack some of yours. He was consistent, methodical, competitive and organized. And always genuine. Matt's friends, and he collected legions of them across his 38 years, have been hollowed out by his passing last week. His co-workers at RunnerSpace, myself included, regarded him as more than our Chief Operating Officer. We've been grapping with the loss and are still grieving. "First off, it's just hard to believe he's gone," videographer Ian Terpin said. "We've been working together and interacting on a daily basis for more than 10 years. I'm still wrapping my mind around it. I never lost a friend this close." All of the traits that led him to athletic success and a professional stint in track and field were also expressed in his work for the company. "He was definitely a grind-it-out type of guy," Scott Bush, a fellow Illinoisan who witnessed some of Scherer's high school heroics, said. "He had that Midwest work ethic and was 'Midwest Nice.' Matt exemplified both of those ideas to perfection." In high school, Scherer grew into an athletic marvel, tall with broad shoulders, a powerful physique and fluid coordination. He was a standout basketball player and golfer and an outlier on a small-school track team. As a senior in 2002, he brought Red Hill High (enrollment: 246) its first and only state track and field trophy. He placed third all by himself, making the finals in four events (100, 200, 400 and long jump) and scoring 25 points with a second, two thirds and a fourth-place finish. “Matt the athlete was about doing the work, working together and getting the result that you’re shooting for,” Bush said.
"On the track, he could be an intimidating character," Matt Barnhart said. "He was big and imposing and wore dark shades. But once you got to know him, he was a little bit shy and thoughtful and kind. He's one of the most considerate people I have ever met." In Eugene, Scherer satiated his appetite for elite competition and also met a group of young, ambitious former Oregon athletes who sought to create a business out of making track and field content for the web. RunnerSpace founder and CEO Ross Krempley started with just a few friends, willing to work for peanuts and the promise of a potential job. Scherer was drawn to the activity, to the idea of a real job in track and field, and building it from scratch. It began modestly. "He was always kind of around as a friend, and happy to help. He started off very slow with it," Krempley said. "But he said 'I could do that. I can do that.' And that built his job essentially. ... What made him special is he always looked at this as a team effort, the goals of the business, and he bought in to the idea of 'How can we have everyone have the coolest job, but not go on forever with the smallest salary?'" The company grew and Scherer's responsibilities increased. He was a Swiss Army knife, capable of handling any task, or figuring out how to do it. Even as he continued to race, first for the Oregon Track Club Elite and later the Brooks Beasts, and eventually became one of the world's best pace-setters, he was working on projects for Krempley. In 2008, at Hayward Field, he won a 600-meter match race against Olympian Nick Symmonds and ran 1:14.41 for No. 6 all-time at that point. He knew some coding and built custom sites and other systems on the website. He created the Excel spreadsheets and Google docs that organized logistics, budgets, calendars and projects. He managed partnerships with track operators at The Armory and JDL Fast Track. He learned everything there was to know about shipping equipment, setting it up in remote locations, operating cameras, directing and producing live webcasts, and titling and archiving the videos. "He used macros to automate tedious processes," Terpin said. "If there was a photo uploading tool that required eight mouse clicks, he'd figure out a way to make it work with four." That was one of his many talents: applying his relentless determination to making processes smoother and more efficient for everybody else. "He'd take the time to figure it out and bring it back to the team. He loved to be that person," former RunnerSpace office mate Shane Land said. Scherer brought the same level of study and focus to rabbiting the world's best 800-meter runners on the international circuit. With planning and attention to detail, only twice in 74 races did he miss his prescribed pace by more than a second. He could serve up 50.5-second laps with precision as a result of practice and muscle memory. He led athletes to 154 personal bests, 10 national records and 10 world leads. Before his retirement from professional running in 2014, Scherer joined his friend, Mark Wieczorek, and helped coach the Gig Harbor boys of Washington to the 2013 Nike Cross Nationals championship. Another project, another success. Scherer became a full-time employee of RunnerSpace and became the company's first COO, a title that he was uniquely qualified for. He was the group's decathlete, able to step up and plug any role. The company's evolution is largely owed to Scherer's skills for creative thinking, tinkering, problem-solving and willingness to ensure positive outcomes. "If I was doing 100 things for the company in a week, I would guess Matt was doing 500 things," Chris Nickinson said. "From ad reports to customer service emails, you name it, he did it. Cover a cross country meet. Hop on a motorcycle with a camera. Data entry..." Instead of parsing videos, Nickinson is one of many this week who are parsing memories. "The second fall we were in Canada (for webcasting), Matt was still pacing, and needing to get in his workouts. I would pace him for his three-mile tempo runs," Nickinson said. "I paced the world's best pacer." More often than not, Scherer was the one taking the brunt of the wind, figuratively, pulling everyone else along by his example and his generosity. The company's biggest effort since the onset of the pandemic was to build a fully functional studio space and sports desk in Eugene, which became operational this fall for live productions of meets like the Bill Dellinger Invitational and the Nike Cross Regional Series. "One of the things we were talking about over the past week is the nature of work on the production side, and how it can be very stressful," Kevin Ullman said. "Matt was always a calming presence at any point in the process, right in the middle of it, as things are hitting the fan, or afterward as a sounding board." Nobody imagined losing him and it's difficult to comprehend the absence. He said he was looking forward to a week's vacation, but thought he should make it five days instead of seven so he would be ready to monitor an upcoming webcast at The Armory in New York. Bush texted with him late on Monday night, Dec. 6, to discuss summer ad reports and the next day's agenda. On Tuesday morning, the weekly staff meeting -- the one that Scherer organizes -- started on time. But Scherer wasn't on the Zoom. He also missed the meetings that followed. Krempley went downstairs and into the control room and asked Ullman if he knew what was going on. He hadn't known Scherer to miss anything, without some explanation, in 15 years. Ullman made some phone calls and was the first to find out the tragic news. He ushered Krempley outside into the parking lot to tell him what happened. The results of an autopsy are pending. Scherer moved to Denver early in 2021 and worked remotely in order to be closer to his 4-year-old daughter, Gemma, whom he loved dearly. He had gone through a divorce and arranged his life to be available to his daughter at every opportunity. For that reason, the magnitude of the loss is compounded in ways that cut even deeper. "When such a solid person leaves you, it feels shaky," Barnhart said. In other words, we're all still shook. "He was this awesome guy who has done so much for so many people and never asked for a thing in return," Robert Rosenberg said. "I'm still trying to collect my thoughts and process it. This still does not feel real." --- Funeral services for Scherer are scheduled for this Saturday at 1:30pm CST in the gymnasium at Red Hill High School in Bridgeport, Ill. (Stream LINK) A fund-raising effort has been established to support Gemma. More information about upcoming tributes to Scherer will be posted as details are finalized. Scherer hosting and early episode of RunnerSpace Live in 2008.
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Coach Dan Steele recruited him to Oregon and Scherer flourished. He became one of the best 400-meter sprinters in Oregon history (45.19), was a member of the school-record 4x400 relay team (3:00.81), and was a nine-time All-American who also excelled in the classroom.
