Impact of a Scholarship: Riki-Ann Serrins

It’s rare for one of the top-ranked women’s soccer teams to have a glaring hole, but that’s exactly where the Maryland women’s soccer team found themselves in the mid-1990s. 

Despite being ranked fourth in the nation at the end of the 1996 season, the team did not have their goalkeeper situation figured out going into the next season. 

That was until incoming freshman Riki-Ann Serrins stepped in between the posts. 

Serrins — a member of the Olympic Development Program as a teen — came to Maryland in 1997 and became a staple between the posts for the next four seasons as the Terps advanced to the NCAA Tournament three times. 

The Mission Viejo, California native played in 59 games, starting 44 during her four years in College Park, and was named second-team All-ACC as a sophomore and senior. 

When she wrapped her playing career after the 2000 season, Serrins was in the top three all-time in goals-against average (1.36), saves (219) and minutes played (4,318), and set the school’s then-record for career shutouts with 13.5.

“We had a really great team," Serrins said. "All four years I was there I was really fortunate to play with some really talented people.”

Not only was it her success on the pitch, but it was also her education that got Serrins to where she is now and it was only possible because of her scholarship. 

“My scholarship meant everything to me,” Serrins said. “It allowed me to do what I love on one of the best teams and in one of the best conferences.”

The idea of being on scholarship can mean different things for different athletes at the University of Maryland. 

For Serrins, it meant that she had the financial flexibility that not many of her friends and peers had.

“I have friends who are still paying off student loans,” Serrins said. “For me to be able to leave college and not have to worry about that money, that was a huge boost to my life.”

One key aspect of being on scholarship that resonated with Serrins was the fact that she wasn’t forced to work a part-time job to make extra money.

Instead, she was able to focus on her training and her schoolwork to become the best version of herself that she could be.

“I loved the fact that I could just focus on training, especially in the summer,” Serrins said. “If I had to pay for school I probably would have had to get a job somewhere which would have just taken time away from what I wanted to do.”

Her path to getting her degree was different than most because despite the University being home to more than 34,000 students in 2001, she was the only woman in her entire class that majored in physical education. 

“For my major it was just me and four other guys,” Serrins said. “My experience was a little weird because the final two years I was just in these classes with these same four guys.”

Academics were always a big part of Serrins’ time at Maryland as she was a three-time member of the ACC Honor Roll and a member of the National Honor Society. 

When she got out of college, Serrins was able to combine what she learned in school along with her athletic prowess as she became an assistant coach with stints at both Georgetown and Tulane. 

“Coaching was always something that interested me,” Serrins said. “It was a good way to blend soccer and teaching.”

After those stints, Serrins decided that she wanted to focus on teaching and took jobs in Fairfax County, Virginia before moving back to her home state of California to continue working in education. 

Serrins is now in her 10th year at the Brentwood School in Los Angeles serving as the Assistant Athletic Director and College Counseling Liaison, where she helps young student-athletes make decisions about their future. 

Using her experience as both a former athlete and an educator, Serrins can help high school student-athletes navigate that decision-making process that she too once went through.

For Serrins, she’s able to do this because the burden of paying for college was not on her, and she’s thankful that it also wasn’t put on her loved ones. 

“I don’t know if my parents would have paid for my college,” Serrins said. “I think I would have had to take out loans and I’d probably still be paying them off. Maryland gave me the freedom to not have to.”