Impact Of A Scholarship: Ryan Schlothauer

It began with a choice between Ivy League powers or in-state schools in Maryland.

Former Terps tight end Ryan Schlothauer didn't get the attention during recruiting of others, but his academic success gave him a potential pathway to Harvard, Princeton, and Dartmouth.

However, with Maryland coming up the rear in the end, the Baltimore native and Eastern Technical HS graduate chose the way of the Terps as a preferred walk-on under head coach Ralph Friedgen.

Schlothauer's choice not only brought him athletic success, working his way from a walk-on to a starter on scholarship but set up the rest of his life as through his college days and now post-playing career, Maryland has been front and center for it all.

"My work ethic, the lessons I learned at Maryland that hard work will pay off, I took that with me into the workforce and into life in general," Schlothauer said. "In the end, if you continue to work hard, things are going to work out for you and they've worked out for me."

Nothing was guaranteed when Schlothauer came into College Park as a walk-on in 2008, but one thing he did know, being placed with the tight ends, is that he needed to bulk up to play the position.

Through his first two seasons, he stuck to the weight room and bulked up to 250-260 pounds, adding on pure muscle as he began to compete more and reach an equal playing field with some of the other players he was fighting for a spot against.

"I was always just kind of driven to work harder than the person next to me, not only in athletics, in the weight room, on the practice field, but also in the classroom," Schlothauer said. 

In his redshirt freshman season, he was part of the scout team, earning player of the week honors three times, leading the team.

That work in all facets of his game led to him getting well-deserved playing time in his sophomore season, playing in all 13 games as a reserve and mostly on special teams.

Academics played a significant role in his success within Maryland football. He earned the George Boutselis Memorial Award in his final three years with the Terps as the team's letterman with the highest GPA.

After the 2010 season, finishing up his third season with Maryland, Schlothauer was finally put on scholarship.

"Seeing him get a scholarship was probably one of the things I was most proud of for another person," close friend and now business partner Louis Berman said. "Ryan was my best friend in college. We probably spent almost every waking minute together and watching him achieve that, it was one of the coolest things I saw."

His success on the field and in the classroom coincided with his being ingrained in Maryland football's brotherhood.

With his time in College Park came the beginnings of relationships that have carried through and stuck with him as he's gone into his post-playing career, Berman being the most notable of the bunch.

Berman joined the program a year before Schlothauer, both as walk-ons. Being a walk-on player is one of the most challenging roles in sports.

All odds are against you, and the success rate of those players becoming impactful players or even earning a scholarship is small.

However, that journey sets players like that up for success later, with that mentality of perseverance sticking with them throughout. Maryland was able to elevate that feeling that much more during the football season.

"There's not many things harder than a Ralph Friedgen full-pad football practice on a Wednesday," Berman said. "That really set us up for life, having that type of discipline and get through it mentality."

Having a scholarship in his final two years at Maryland eased the financial burden for Schlothauer and his family, and it also helped him begin his MBA within the Robert H. Smith School of Business.

If football wasn't challenging enough, finishing rigorous courses at Smith was.

Unfortunately for Schlothauer, his quest toward a master's was put on pause as his life was nearly taken away after being stabbed at a bar in Towson in April 2013.

Schlothauer received serious injuries, including two collapsed lungs, and it took nearly a year for him to fully recover.

"It makes you grateful for what you have and it made me take advantage of every opportunity that I had moving forward," Schlothauer said. "I was super grateful for life itself."

The Maryland brotherhood again took center stage as Berman stayed in the hospital with him for days following the incident.

"We were always there for each other," Berman said.

At the time of the incident, Schlothauer was preparing himself for the NFL Draft, and while he could get back into shape for Maryland's pro day in 2014, the physical toll he went through proved to be too much for his football career to continue.

It did open up a pathway toward his post-playing career at the same time, and he, with the help of Berman, got into the mortgage business just a few years following his final season with the Terps in 2012.

Schlothauer's breakthrough began at NewDay USA, which transitioned into a six-year tenure at Credence Funding Corporation in November 2016.

"Louis and I started right around the same time in the mortgage industry," Schlothauer said. "There were a couple of other teammates where actually, we all worked together, right off the bat. It was a field I liked and it turned out, by chance, that it was a field that I enjoyed doing."

His hard-working mentality toward getting a scholarship as a student-athlete stuck with him. It helped him become a branch manager with Credence before joining Berman at Watermark Home Loans in November 2022.

"You look at it from far away and it's like, 'Wow, two teammates ended up partnering up years later,' but Ryan is a brother to me and we stayed in contact enough through the years," Berman said. "We knew that entering the same industry, we were going to work together at some point. We just didn't know when."

Just as Maryland helped him get his footing and put the pieces in place to be successful later in life, Schlothauer has gone full circle, recently joining the Terrapin Club to help others that were in the same position as him over a decade ago have the resources to be successful.

It's brought him back to seeing a number of old faces and has brought with it a newfound excitement for being around the program and school that has stuck around with him so much.

"I teamed up with Kirby [Mills] and I'm really trying to get back to Maryland and at the same time, be connected with Maryland football all over again," Schlothauer said. "It brought me back and I'm excited for the season to see some familiar faces in person."