Even for those who weren’t lucid enough to fully process the 2012 installment of The Game, the name Treavor Scales should ring a bell. The senior running back starred against Yale, rushing for a career-high 177 yards in front of 31,123 fans. His final play in a Harvard uniform—a 63-yard touchdown run at the end of the fourth quarter to seal the Crimson’s sixth straight victory over the Bulldogs, 34-24—was a fittingly dominant close to a stellar four years on the gridiron.
“At the end of the day, when you remember that last play, you want to be able to say that you enjoyed the last down that you played,” Scales says. “That final moment for me was…an amazing ending. I couldn’t have written it up better for myself.”
Over the course of the 2012-13 season, Scales rushed for a league-best 1002 yards and 13 touchdowns, earning him a spot on the All-Ivy first team—his fourth all-conference nod in as many years.
An economics concentrator with a citation in German—a language he began studying in kindergarten—Scales found himself in the spotlight off the field as a student in Dr. Lisa Parkes’ class entitled “German Drama and Theater,” a course that culminated in a play at the end of last spring in the Adams Pool Theater.
For Scales, the class was a memorable end to many years studying the language.
“It’s so easy to get excited about something when you can tell the professor herself is really involved and really invested in it,” Scales says. “Having [Parkes] as a coach of some sort was awesome.”
The Stone Mountain, Ga. native credits his involvement in football, DAPA, and the Athletic Advisory Committee with shaping his Harvard experience.
As the curtain falls on his time in Cambridge, the running back has nothing but praise for his teammates and coaches.
“It’s been awesome playing with the guys that I’ve played with,” Scales says. “The coaching staff has been unreal. Winning is always fun, and we’ve done plenty of that. It’s been an awesome experience overall.”
The senior says he appreciated the chance to branch out from his football roots through his other extracurriculars, although there aren’t enough hours in the day for him to accomplish everything he would have liked.
“The decisions I’ve made, whether or not they were right or wrong in the moment, I can look back upon each one of them and chalk them up to being a learning experience,” Scales says. “I guess the only thing I would take away as a regret in my time here is [not being] more involved on campus and getting to meet more and more people. I love to meet people; I love developing relationships; and that’s one thing that I would love to have done more.”
In March, Scales will compete for a spot on a professional roster at the NFL Pro Day at Boston College in March. If all goes well, he will continue his football career after graduation, taking it to the next level as a professional running back.
