Campus Connected: Ari Levine & Brad Hench
Alyssa Muir, Strategic Communications Assistant/Staff Writer
3/23/2023
The Winter 2023 issue of ONE MARYLAND Magazine recently arrived in the mailboxes of Terrapin Club members. ONE MARYLAND features stories of strength and perseverance, of determination and spirit. These stories define our athletics program, and this new magazine will allow us to share these stories with you. Over the next few weeks, we will be rolling out these stories on umterps.com as a preview of what you will find in ONE MARYLAND. To receive future issues of the magazine when they debut, please join the Terrapin Club. We hope you enjoy.
Brad Hench was notified he had won a Maryland’s men’s lacrosse helmet from a raffle he barely recalled participating in.
“I saw the raffle, clicked a few buttons and, next thing I knew, I got an email that I won,” Hench recalled.
Always one to think bigger, Hench asked for it to be signed by head coach John Tillman. When Hench, a board member of the Atlanta Terps Alumni Network, first saw the helmet in person, he knew he could do something much greater with it.
He immediately called his friend and president of the Atlanta Terps Alumni Network Ari Levine about auctioning off the helmet at the Atlanta group’s annual October crab feast.
The two worked hand-in-hand and brought Hench’s idea to fruition. They advertised the helmet as the main auction item and instilled excitement within the up-and-coming Maryland alumni network in Atlanta.
“We’ve always done giveaways and raffles, but the helmet really got folks that typically might not even attend one of those events to bid on it,” Levine said. “The fervor of the group was incredible. We kept hearing, ‘Oh, if I win the helmet, I’m going to put it on my mantle” or “I’m gonna stick it on my car bumper.’”
There’s no other school in the country that can give you the DC power scene combined with the traditional land grant scene all wrapped up into one neat package. This is a special community. People here develop a love for the school that really has nothing to do with athletic success and that’s not super common these days.Brad Hench
One Terp family’s passion stood out from the rest. Heath Rodman, a 1995 graduate, walked into the crab feast with his wife and two kids. The kids had their lacrosse sticks with them and were having a ton of fun, even before they saw the helmet. Once they did lay eyes on it, they became so excited that Hench’s wife, Judy, told him that if Hench won the raffle, he had to give it to the Rodmans.
Of course, the Rodmans won and, as a result, $1,250 was raised and donated to the Maryland student hardship fund—a successful night all-around for Hench and Levine.
“We wanted to build the enthusiasm of alumni events like this, we wanted to give Maryland alumni something to hang onto here in Atlanta, and we wanted to raise some money for such a worthwhile cause,” Hench said. “We did all of that.”
“As a university community, most of the funds focus on tuition and getting kids into college,” Levine added. “What the crisis fund focuses on is the life of the student, which is equally if not more important, especially because we just had a true crisis hit with COVID. It’s easy to forget as a professional now, but literally every dollar counts for these students.”
Hench wants to keep auctioning major items like the helmet off in the future in hopes of both growing the Terp alumni network in Atlanta and continuing to raise money for important causes.
Why? Because few things mean more to him than the University of Maryland and its community.
“There’s a definite spirit here that is unlike anywhere else,” Hench said. “There’s no other school in the country that can give you the DC power scene combined with the traditional land grant scene all wrapped up into one neat package. This is a special community. People here develop a love for the school that really has nothing to do with athletic success and that’s not super common these days.”
