Impact Of A Scholarship: Jason Carrier

It has always been about relationships and connections for former Maryland men’s lacrosse star Jason Carrier.

From the moment he stepped on campus as a recruit, Carrier knew he was going to be a Terp.

“It just felt like home and I didn’t get that feeling anywhere else,” Carrier said.

At the time, men’s lacrosse recruits were allowed to take official visits to five schools. Carrier’s fifth visit was to Maryland.

During the four previous visits, Carrier had only met a handful of student-athletes. But when he visited Maryland, Carrier met the entire men’s lacrosse team within a couple of hours.

“I thought to myself, ‘wow this is like a small family,’” Carrier said. “I immediately felt a part of a bigger group and not just like a little clique of your classmates. That to me was the deciding factor.”

Carrier was hooked on the ability to build lifelong relationships and friendships at Maryland.

“As a student-athlete you grind it out every day in the gym and on the field and you better enjoy the people you’re around, otherwise it makes for a difficult experience,” Carrier stated.

Relationships with teammates were not the only priorities Carrier had in mind as a recruit. It was equally as important to him to build a lifelong relationship with his coaches.

Dick Edell, one of the greatest coaches in collegiate lacrosse history, was at the helm of the Terrapins at the time.

Edell quickly became more than just a coach to Carrier and his teammates.

“Coach Edell was and still is a second father to me,” Carrier said emotionally. “Life lessons to my kids and to myself in the business and in fatherhood all came from him.

“Not only was he a tall human being, he had the biggest heart. He put complex topics, issues and game plans and made them really simple, and so for that I’m forever grateful. I look up to him the same from the minute I met him to today and I’m truly getting emotional because that’s how much he means to me. There isn’t anyone that has ever played for him that would say anything different. He just had that impact on so many people around him.”

Edell and Carrier built quite a relationship off the field, but also had great success together on the field. Together they went to two national championship games, which Carrier recalls as his fondest memory sporting a Terrapin jersey.

In 1997, Carrier’s freshman year, the Terps earned the No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Carrier recalls the national semifinal matchup in the Final Four against third-seeded Syracuse as one of the best games in his career.

“The Final Four was in College Park in front of the largest crowd it had ever seen, there was like 35,000 in Byrd Stadium, and it was an 82-degree day on Memorial Day weekend,” Carrier said. “We upset Syracuse 18-17 in one of the best games in NCAA playoff history.”

But the All-American defender’s favorite accomplishment came prior to his senior season.

“The biggest thing for me was being honored to be a captain of a very prestigious university, which was one of my biggest honors,” Carrier said.

Playing lacrosse on scholarship at the University of Maryland gave Carrier so many experiences, but for him the best experiences will always fall back on building relationships.

“To me the best experience is the network of student-athletes you play with,” Carrier said. “Now we have an incredible lacrosse alumni network that helps us all stay in touch. We get together several times a year, one for a golf outing to raise money for the Dick Edell Foundation. I am always willing to offer help no matter what line of work anyone is in because we are Terps and that’s what we do, we help each other out. That’s what being a part of the incredible experience of an institution like Maryland is like.”

The ability to build such quality relationships translated into Carrier’s professional life. Currently, he is the Executive Vice President for Century 21 New Millennium in Washington, D.C. It is a sizable real estate firm and Carrier is one of the partners, and he has been doing it for more than 15 years.

Real estate is something that requires the capability to build relationships and trust, which Carrier was able to do so often at Maryland. Both his mother and father were in the real estate business in New Jersey, where he grew up.

Carrier was a communications major at Maryland because being able to communicate well was important to him.

“I was a communications major and the ability to communicate was a valuable major no matter where I ended up,” he said.

His professional life came to be because of his ability to make solid relationships from his time at Maryland as a student athlete on scholarship.

“Scholarship money gives kids an opportunity that they wouldn’t otherwise have,” he said. “Being a student-athlete, especially at Maryland, it shapes you for life, in the sense that it teaches you the right morals, values and disciplines that you’ll take forever. And that’s what scholarship dollars do. It paves the way to come out with life experiences.”

Carrier claims he learned a lot from his social life and interactions at Maryland, not just on the lacrosse field.

“If you can’t communicate who you are and your value in a public setting then you're going to be in trouble in life,” Carrier said. “It’s all about relationships, working together, networking and being not only a team player on the field but as team players off the field when your career is over.”