Impact Of A Scholarship: Guilian Gary

Living in the Denver, Colorado, area, you might not meet many fellow Maryland Terrapin fans or alums. 

But when you do, you immediately form a bond. 

When one Terp fan based out of Denver with Maryland-themed license plates came out to his car one morning, he noticed a Maryland scarf wrapped around his side mirror. The fan was confused and amused and knew he wasn’t the only Terp in town.

A few days later, that fan met the man who had left the scarf. It wasn’t just a Terps fan. It was former Maryland football star Guilian Gary. 

The wide receiver now lives in Denver and loves all things Terps so much that any other fan immediately becomes his brother. For Gary, his affinity for the red, white, black, and gold extends to all teams and every aspect of the school.

His love of Maryland stems from his scholarship and the fact that Maryland gave him so much.

“I'm very thankful, and I love all of my time at Maryland and my connections from Maryland,” Gary said. “I’m very appreciative, and I’ve used what I got from my scholarship every single day.”

Gary reciprocated everything his scholarship gave him as he was the consummate student-athlete both on and off the field. 

The Horseheads, New York, native caught 113 balls for 1552 yards and 13 touchdowns in his time at Maryland, but it wasn’t until his senior season that he became a legend. 

Gary was a leader on the 2001 ACC championship team that captured the hearts of Maryland fans, but it wasn’t an easy feat to accomplish. It was years in the making for Gary and partially came out of jealousy.

“We were living the TV college football life,” Gary said. “Being down at Bentley's, being seen, all of that didn't matter when you weren't good. Our basketball team is going to the Final Four. The women's lacrosse team was winning national championships every single year. It doesn't matter when you're the second, third, fourth, fifth bill on campus.”

Being a wide receiver means Gary got a lot of the limelight, none bigger than his touchdown catch with 41 seconds left to give Maryland the lead over NC State, clinching the conference title. 

Gary loved all of the time he spent in College Park and is especially proud of how he set himself up for the future. Looking back, Gary is even more appreciative of what his scholarship gave to him.

“Loans and the money, those are the big wins,” Gary said. “You're going to college for free. You're hanging out with your boys. You're playing on a team. You're doing all these things, and you're getting an education that you're going to use for the rest of your life.”

Gary vividly recalls newly-minted head coach Ralph Friedgen coming and establishing a new culture, one founded upon key principles that included working as hard and fast as the players ever have before.

The grind of the offseason was brutal, but it was something that Gary thinks ultimately brought the team closer together.

“When we were training, you couldn't go out to the bars,” Gary said. "You couldn't be doing anything. We had a curfew, we had all these things to stay in line, and we made a sacrifice for each other for a bigger cause. We had no idea what the bigger cause was because we couldn't picture an ACC Championship. We just wanted to go to a bowl game, and we were sacrificing with these 5:45 a.m. winter workouts through February.”

Gary and his teammates never ran from the grind. They embraced it, and it became a moment for all of them that bonded them for life.

“I just remember laying there on the floor laying there after the workout looking at everyone else laying there, the same as me. We left it all in the workout because the coaches drew it all out of us. When I look back at it, it was the sacrifices that we all made for a bigger cause that I love the most.”

The college sports landscape has changed considerably over the past 20 years since Gary played at Maryland Stadium. With athletes having as much power as they ever have before, Gary is both happy for and jealous of athletes receiving the benefits that he believes they deserve.

But that doesn’t mean Gary is bitter about what he was given. It’s the opposite. Gary is even more proud of his scholarship and everything it afforded him because he turned his scholarship and time at Maryland into something he loves.

“For those of us who didn’t have and were without NIL, we look at the scholarship differently,” Gary said. “What it was able to do for me was to be a University of Maryland Terrapin, go to college, play football and not have to worry about the financial burden of college. It was a blessing, and I'm extremely thankful, grateful, and happy.”

The former wide-out became a coach pretty soon out of college but later worked his way up into becoming Senior Manager in Marketing for Under Armour, which he still holds today.

Gary works with a litany of NFL stars, including but not limited to Justin Jefferson, Jonathan Taylor, Tony Romo, Patrick Peterson, Eddie Lacy, and Russell Wilson, as well as Maryland Terrapins legend Stefon Diggs. 

With a job in sports marketing, Gary can stay close to the game that he loves so much, and while he’s in a city that’s far away from College Park, MD, he still keeps his love for the Terps close to his heart and shares it with everyone.

All of that love started when Gary earned a scholarship to the place he now calls home and remains grateful to the donors who paid for his scholarship. 

“You have no idea the blessing that you gave us,” Gary said. “All you can do is say thank you.”