Matt Schera’s circuitous journey from aspiring weatherman to one of the most successful thoroughbred owners in the nation is the stuff that dreams – and scripts – are made of.
Through it all, however, the low-key 41-year-old Twin Valley High School graduate has never forgotten where he came from.
Earlier this month, Schera’s old stomping grounds took center stage at historic Saratoga Race Course in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Saratoga, whose meet dates back to 1863, was named as one of the world’s top 10 sports venues of the 20th century by Sports Illustrated.
Berks County, a two-year-old colt owned by Schera that he named as an homage to the place he spent his youth, won his debut race in impressive fashion Aug. 11, besting a high-profile field in a 5.5-furlong maiden special weight turf sprint.
“I have fond memories of where I grew up,” said Schera, who works for hedge fund in Greenwich, Conn., where he lives with his wife Janine and three young daughters Allison, Alexis and Jessica. “My wife will sometimes say, ‘Stop living in Berks County!’ But I can’t help it. I like the area.”
Since buying his first horse just three years ago, Schera has put together a stable that currently includes 67 thoroughbreds in training, five broodmares and two babies.
Heading into Thursday, the $1,820,867 in purse money his horses have earned this year rank 12th out of 22,115 owners in the country, according to equibase.com, the industry’s official statistics database.
“My life to this point has been really lucky,” Schera said last week from his home in Greenwich, Conn., where he has been shuttling back and forth from Saratoga since the meet began July 22. “If you would have put odds back then, when I was growing up, on me being where I’m at now, it would have been the same kind of odds as being struck by lightning. It really was a longshot.”
* * *Schera’s meteoric rise, both in the business and horse racing worlds, is a direct result of his first love, meteorology.
“I was a weather geek from the time I was a little kid,” Schera admitted. “I used to record the weather reports on TV and watch them over and over. The (winter) storm in ’83 (when Schera’s Robeson Township neighborhood was blanketed with two feet of snow) and Hurricane Gloria in ’85 really drew me in.”
After graduating from Twin Valley, where he was a member of the Raiders baseball team, Schera attended Penn State-Berks before moving on to Penn State’s main campus. There, he earned a degree in atmospheric sciences and was classmates with current Weather Channel personalities Maria LaRosa and Jen Carfagno.
He began his professional career with a two-year stint at AccuWeather in State College before moving to Baltimore for a gig with Constellation Energy – a company that traded national gas, power, and weather derivatives. During his five-year tenure there, Schera began to parlay his weather expertise, math acumen and problem-solving skills into a repertoire that made him a successful trader.
In 2006, Schera and another trader moved to Connecticut and began to work as a team for Greenwich-based hedge fund Tudor Investment Corporation, where his uncanny success in that field has given him the financial freedom to pursue his other dream: horse racing.
* * *Schera began following the sport as a teenager, thanks largely to the interest of his mother, Bonnie.
“She used to go to Penn National in the early 90s, and she’d have a stack of Daily Racing Forms sitting around the house. She wasn’t just picking numbers; she was into handicapping.”
Matt’s curiosity got the best of him, and he was hooked for life.
“I started reading the old charts in the back of the Form, and started seeing patterns,” he said. “Forecasting weather is a lot about patterns, and maybe that was my strength and I was able to begin to successfully predict winners.”
When Schera turned 18, he began to frequent the now-former Penn National Off-Track Wagering facility in Exeter. His favorite horse was Holy Bull, the champion 3-year-old male of 1994.
During his down time in college, Schera continued to pursue his equine passion, following the races on Penn National’s television channel and making periodic commutes from State College to the OTW facility.
“I got really serious about handicapping,” he said. “Back then there wasn’t a whole lot of simulcasting (of nationwide tracks), so I pretty much followed only Penn National. I used to record races with my VCR, and probably had about 100 tapes. After I’d hit the track, I’d go home and pop the tape in, and it was like a coach watching the replay of a game. I’d watch for bad starts, bad trips, speed horses that got caught in a duel. And I kept records and was able to make money. It kind of helped me get through college.”
* * *In August of 2013, Schera purchased his first racehorse, Cat Fiftyfive, at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale for selected yearlings.
“I wound up buying two yearlings, but it was like, ‘This is no fun; I can’t run them for another year,'” he recalled.
Schera subsequently attended a horses-of-racing-age sale that fall at Saratoga, where he purchased Street Slang – who wound up being his first winner when he took a maiden race at Parx on Nov. 1, 2013.
As a nod to his former profession, many of Schera’s horses are named for weather-related phenomena.
One of them, Cyclogenisis, became Schera’s first stakes winner by taking the Laurel Futurity at Maryland’s Laurel Park in September of 2014.
Another, Isotherm, ran in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Keeneland Race Course in Lexington, Ky.
And Vorticity finished second in the Grade 3 Jerome Stakes and Grade 3 Withers Stakes – a couple of Kentucky Derby preps – at Aqueduct (N.Y.) in January before an injury forced him to the sidelines until likely late in the year.
Schera’s most accomplished horse thus far is Race Day, who won three graded stakes in 2015 (the Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap, the Grade 2 Fayette Handicap and Grade 3 Razorback at Oaklawn) before being retired and heading off to the breeding shed this year. Isotherm won the Grade 3 Pilgrim Stakes at Belmont in 2015, and Syntax took the Grade 3 Kent Stakes in 2015 at Delaware Park.
As an owner, Schera has followed his stock virtually all over the country, and even to England, where Cyclogenisis competed in the Group 1 Commonwealth Cup Sprint at the prestigious Royal Ascot meet last June.
Schera’s horses have made a total of 620 starts, with 108 victories, 109 second-place finishes and 79 third-place finishes over the past three years. Though his roster swelled as high as 77 last year, Schera admitted he will most likely be paring down the size down the road.
“It’s a tough game,” Schera said. “You’re trying to make a profit, but it’s a really, really hard business to make a profit in. You either hit it big with an American Pharoah (last year’s Triple Crown winner) or you usually lose money. I love it so much, but probably over the next few years I’ll be a little leaner and have a smaller stable. I’m trying to slowly reduce, but it’s hard because I love it so much.”
After notching an impressive five victories at Saratoga last year, Schera has seen his stable already notch five wins through Wednesday and is tied for second in the always-competitive fray for the honor of the meet’s leading owner.
What makes Schera’s accomplishments all the more impressive is that he’s largely done it utilizing lesser-heralded, under-the-radar trainers instead of juggernaut outfits such as high-percentage perennial kingpins Chad Brown and Todd Pletcher.
While Race Day was trained by Pletcher, most of Schera’s current stock is divided up between trainers James Lawrence II, George Weaver, Carlos Martin, Mike Pino, Lacey Gaudet and Cathal Lynch.
“Matt has been a big boost to my stable,” Lawrence told Thoroughbred Racing Commentary last year. “He has so much enthusiasm for the game. For someone who has just been in the game a few years, he’s done a lot better than some people who have been in it 20.”
Beeks, trained by Weaver and ridden by Luis Saez, got the ball rolling at Saratoga by winning a maiden special weight sprint on July 29. The next day, Old Upstart, with Jose Ortiz up for Lawrence, took down a claiming sprint.
On Aug. 11, it was the Martin-trained Berks County’s time to shine, as jockey Jose Lezcano was aboard for a stirring last-to-first run down the stretch.
“I thought he had a good chance, but I didn’t know if he’d like the turf,” Schera said. “We knew he worked well with decent horses in the morning (workouts), but we weren’t sure what else was in the race. I knew he’d put a good run in, but I didn’t think he’d run like that. On a scale of 1 to 10, I was expecting a 6, and it was more like a 9.5.”
Zero Zee (named after yet another weather term), trained by Weaver and ridden by Eric Cancel, scored the following day in a maiden special weight turf sprint for fillies. And Wednesday, the Weaver-trained Cort went wire-to-wire in a turf sprint for jockey John Velazquez.
“The fact that we had two two-year-old, first-out winners in two days was amazing,” Schera said.
With the Saratoga meet heading down the stretch to its Labor Day finish, Schera is just two wins behind of front-runner Klaravich Stables Inc./William Lawrence.
Beeks was nominated to the Aug. 27 Kings Bishop Stakes, while Sup?er Allison (named after Schera’s oldest daughter) will try to follow up last month’s New York Oaks victory at Finger Lakes in a statebred stakes on the Aug. 26 New York Showcase Day.
As for Berks County, Schera said he was looking at a possible return in the With Anticipation Stakes Aug. 31 if everything works out.
Another win could mean consideration for the Breeders Cup Juvenile Turf at Santa Anita in November. A poor showing, meanwhile, could severely curtail the optimism and expectations.
In the volatile world of horse racing, much like the weather, you never know what the future might bring. Just ask Schera.
“Never in a million years did I imagine I’d be in this position,” he said. “It was always a dream of mine to own horses. If I hadn’t moved up to Connecticut and started trading commodities and done well, I wouldn’t be able to afford this. And I think my weather background was really the key.”
A key that has unlocked a bright and sunny transition into thoroughbred ownership for Schera.
