Maryland Love Connection: Caleb Rowe and Sarah Molina

For Caleb Rowe and Sarah Molina, College Park and Maryland Athletics helped shape and mold their relationships, going from two student-athletes to a married couple and expecting a child together.

Rowe, a former Maryland quarterback, and Molina, a former Terps women’s soccer midfielder, came to the University of Maryland in 2012, both from out-of-state and with two very different backgrounds. Rowe grew up in Landrum, South Carolina, and Molina hailed from Rocky River, Ohio. 

If you ask both of them when they met, they each give very different stories.

“We first met at a gymnastics meet in late January of 2013, so second semester freshman year,” Molina said. “I was at a gymnastics meet with like 10 of my soccer teammates and [Caleb] came in with one of my teammates and another football guy. We met and I remember meeting him, but he just remembers meeting 10 soccer girls.”

That late January day, Rowe talked to one of Molina’s roommates and she invited him and a couple of his friends over to their apartment to watch Super Bowl XLVII when the Baltimore Ravens played the San Francisco 49ers a few days later.

“So they came over to our apartment and that’s when he remembers specifically meeting me,” Molina said. “So, it’s like three days after I met him, he met me.”

As the duo was developing their connection and relationship they were excelling on the football field and soccer pitch, as well. Rowe, a top-30 quarterback in his recruiting class, had quite the career at Maryland, finishing his career ranked 18th in Maryland history in career passing yards with 2,958 yards and career completions with 218. He spent five years as a Terp from 2012-16 and redshirted his junior season after suffering a season-ending ACL tear. 

Across his five years in College Park, Rowe played in 36 games, completed 51 percent of his passes and threw for 18 touchdowns. His name stood prominently in the record book until recently as the last Terp to throw for 300 yards in a game. He racked up  332 yards against Virginia on Oct. 12, 2013, a feat that no Maryland quarterback reached until Taulia Tagovailoa threw for 394 yards against Minnesota this season on Oct. 30.

From Football to Futbol

Molina was a top-50 recruit in her class and earned a starting position as a true freshman, helping lead the Terps to a berth in the ACC Championship game and an NCAA Tournament selection in 2012. She scored her first career goal as a sophomore and started all of Maryland’s games during her junior and senior seasons, playing 58 career contests in her four years in College Park.

“Being in the same season was nice because we both understood that our time spent together was going to be dictated by sports,” she said. “In the fall, we had a really good understanding of each other’s mindsets and what type of schedule we were to expect.”

During their seasons, Rowe and Molina would see each other for lunch for about a half hour everyday, and that would be it, but to them that was enough because they really learned how to value their time together.

When they would arrive at school in the summer for preseason they would see each other on campus, which they also learned to value.

Because both of them played sports in the fall they couldn’t get to each other’s games too often, but they always found a way to support one another.

“We didn’t really get to go to each other’s games very often, especially because our travel was very different for soccer,” Molina said. “If he was away, I would watch him play, which would be really fun to watch him play on the road. If we were both on the road, my team would broadcast their games on the bus or in the hotel, we’d all set up a TV and watch. My whole team was really supportive of him and the football team because of our relationship.”

If the football team was on campus during the women’s soccer games, Rowe would usually show up to Ludwig Field for Molina’s games just in time to catch the conclusion after he got out of practice or meetings.

“He’d run over from the Gossett Football Team House to be able to watch the last 10 or 15 minutes of my games,” Molina said. “It was always nice to be able to walk off the field and see him there, even if he was only there for 10 minutes.”

If their schedules worked out where football had a home game and Molina was practicing on campus she would walk to the stadium to watch him play.

“I think overall, being able to find time to go to each other’s games was probably my favorite memory of playing sports together,” Molina said. 

Rowe’s best memories came from spending time with Molina when they would get lunch together every day at the Adele H. Stamp Student Union and when they’d walk on campus together.

“We randomly had drug testing at five in the morning and we’d walk across campus at like 4:30 a.m. in the freezing cold,” Rowe said. “There’s a lot of experiences that we will cherish forever.”

Making New Memories and Rekindling Old Ones 

Rowe and Molina’s connection was built through athletics at Maryland and even the next step of their relationship came at Capital One Field at Maryland Stadium.

Molina graduated in 2015, after four years and went on to be a teacher, living in Annapolis, Maryland. Rowe used his extra year of eligibility in 2016, allowing Molina to attend all of his home games that season, including one that would become one of the most special games of their lives.

Rowe’s senior night was already a big deal because of how many injuries and comebacks he went through with two ACL tears and a back surgery. Rowe’s family and Molina’s family all came to College Park for the game, which caused her to wonder a little bit.

“I was suspicious,” Molina said. “I was that girl that was like ‘oh my gosh what if he proposes,’ but then I was like ‘what if I’m thinking he’s going to propose and he doesn’t then I am also that girl,’ so I didn’t know what to expect.”

Rowe ended up getting on one knee, in his full football uniform, and asked Molina to marry him.

“It was an amazing experience to be able to be surrounded by both of our families because we’re not from Maryland,” Molina said. “Being able to do it at Maryland, based on how our relationship started at Maryland it was really just like a cherry on top.”

Their relationship came back full circle after both of them accepted positions to work with their former teams. Rowe was a graduate assistant for the Maryland football team and he volunteered and was a GA for two years. Molina volunteered in 2019, after she was a high school soccer coach and head coach Ray Leone reached out to her asking if she was interested in the position and she was immediately accepted.

“I love Maryland soccer and definitely wanted to be a part of the program even though it wasn’t the coaches that I necessarily played for,” Molina said.

Molina helped lead Maryland women’s soccer to a 9-8-3 record, its best record since joining the Big Ten Conference in 2014, and a first-ever spot in the Big Ten Tournament. 

Simultaneously working with their former teams in College Park, brought back old memories for the duo.

“We did it at the same time and it was just fun and nostalgic to be on Ludwig [Field] and him be at Gossett and be able to see each other after practices and meet up with each other in Maryland gear again,” Molina said. “It was just fun to be back in that environment.”

Molina’s reason to come back and help her former team was different from the motive of Rowe’s reason to return. Molina has a great relationship with Leone and desired to come back and help the team. Rowe was pursuing a career in coaching, so the GA program at Maryland was a perfect start. Rowe now coaches at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, D.C.

“His reason was more of a career path and mine was more that I just loved the program and wanted to be back and be able to help,” Molina said.

Revealing Pride

Life after college for Rowe and Molina has still always had ties to once being student-athletes at Maryland.

“It’s a weird transition going from being an athlete to being a normal human being,” Molina said. “I think the biggest thing is taking everything we have learned from sports and applying it to the real world. One of the reasons I got the job I have today is because on my resume they saw I was a Division I athlete and taking that as something that’s a blessing and using it now to just further our careers is kind of what we’ve been doing.”

After getting engaged on Nov. 26, 2016, Rowe and Molina got married on July 14, 2018 surrounded by family, friends and former Maryland teammates from both sports.

After renting a townhouse in Annapolis for a year, the couple just bought their first home together in Annapolis in September. Rowe and Molina are expecting their first child together in January and they celebrated with a gender reveal.

Roman Braglio, the best man at their wedding and one of Rowe’s best friends and former teammates, has a farm in Woodstock, Maryland. The farm is an event farm that has crops and country store items where the couple hosted their gender reveal party.

“We wanted to be able to have a reveal, but because of what’s been going on we knew it would have to be smaller and only close friends and family in a safe environment,” Molina said. “We had a bunch of our old teammates at his barn and revealed [that we were having a daughter] to everybody.”

The two have not left Maryland since they came in 2012 as students, which is something that Rowe is surprised by. 

“She’s from Cleveland and I’m from South Carolina, you know, both randomly picking a school far from home and then actually staying here, I guess it proves that we like the area,” Rowe said. “I never thought that I would stay in Maryland, but we met in Maryland and ended up staying and we’ve been here for a while.”

Rowe and Molina came from out-of-state and built their relationship together in College Park.

“We take a lot of pride in the fact that we came from Maryland Athletics,” Molina said.