Mentorship Matters

Maryland men’s lacrosse not only provides student-athletes with the ability to compete on the highest stage but also allows student-athletes to explore career opportunities with its network of successful Terp lacrosse alumni.

The winning tradition of Maryland lacrosse is unparalleled. Ninety-nine seasons, 883 wins, 45 conference titles, 28 NCAA Final Fours, 522 All-Americans, and 13 national championships. It’s much more than a winning athletic program, though. It’s a family that consistently helps its student-athletes think about their future and introduces them to people and career opportunities in the fields that they’re interested in.

“Go to Maryland, you're going to play meaningful games in May,” Drew Tyrie, the leader of the program, said. “You're probably going to be in the Final Four. You might well win a national championship, and you'd be prepared possibly to go to the PLL. But you also could come get the career of your choice through an education and the network at the University of Maryland.”

Maryland boasts a mentorship program that has successfully allowed current student-athletes and recent graduates to pursue their dreams. The system features former athletes who went through the program and are now in various stages of their careers in different parts of the country.

King Ripley, Alex Smith, and Joshua Coffman are all part of the Maryland lacrosse family and were all part of the Terps’ NCAA National Championship squad in 2022. Coffman is the only one out of the three who still currently plays at Maryland, but all three have had career-altering experiences with the mentorship program.

All three are also Maryland natives who played midfielder for the Terps and struggled to find their passion outside of lacrosse when they first got on campus. Each with a unique background and set of experiences was able to discover what they're passionate about, and they turned that passion into lucrative full-time jobs with a bit of outside help.

Ripley got involved with the mentorship program as a freshman. He has since graduated and works as a financial services consultant with Ernst and Young. He says Tyrie and the mentorship program were crucial in helping him land that job.

Ripley attended Maryland from 2019-23 and was named Academic All-Big Ten for three straight seasons from 2021-23. He was also a finance major with a minor in real estate development but had prior experience, having already completed an internship with Anchor Capital. The experience gave Ripley a solid foundation, but he turned to Tyrie and the mentorship program for help regarding the next step.

The freshman approached Tyrie after one of his first practices, and Tyrie immediately helped Ripley find a way to flip his experience into something better and more tailored to what he wanted to do with his degree.

“You can kind of tell when someone else matches your energy,” Ripley said. “ I felt that Drew was very caring and I immediately felt like I had someone in my corner, which felt very valuable as a young freshman who didn’t really know what they wanted to do after college or maybe [with] internships while in college.”

The next summer, Ripley landed a commercial real estate internship, and Tyrie connected him with lacrosse alumni working in that field in the D.C. area. He got Ripley in contact with Andrew Schwartzman, another midfielder for the Terps from 2002-05. Ripley says Tyrie was always conscious of the next step and cognizant of his personal experience. 

Ripley went through several other internships, starting with a private equity internship and then finding a commercial real estate internship that he turned into a full-time consulting job.

Smith played for the Terps from 2019-2022 after transferring from Hartford and was named Academic All-Big Ten for three straight seasons (2020-22). He received his bachelor’s degree in criminology and his master’s degree in business and management. The career path Smith would take wasn’t clear early on despite his successes.

Now working as a professional lacrosse player and a senior risk analyst at Goldman Sachs, Smith was able to navigate a unique career path after being uncertain about the future. He formed relationships with guys like Tyrie, David Saunders, Mark Shores, and Marc Dubick, who all played lacrosse for the Terps before him. 

“I think it was influential in kind of understanding the plan after lacrosse is over and I graduate,” Smith said. “From talking to those individuals, getting experience in their different fields, you can kind of start to formulate a plan of what it looks like in five years when I'm in the workforce.”

Smith says the program’s alumni reached out initially to make him aware that they were a resource. There was a clear structure, he explained. Student-athletes were assigned a mentor they could set up recurring calls with. Each mentor had a tree of alumni under them to help with career development.

Smith was steered towards the financial services sector despite having no prior experience in the field. Mentors helped Smith with his approach, and he successfully leveraged himself as a candidate. He secured an internship with Goldman Sachs where he currently works full-time.

The former Maryland student-athlete also plays in the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL) for the Denver Outlaws. He even won the inaugural Sixes Championship Series when the Outlaws were still known as the Chrome Lacrosse Club in 2023.

“There actually is a good network of Maryland alumni at work in New York in some financial sides,” Smith said. “Some do insurance, some real estate, but there are people who still play in the PLL but also work in New York with a full-time job. It's a testament to the Maryland culture and Maryland alumni network.”

Coffman got involved with the mentorship program at the end of his freshman year. He graduated with a degree in sociology last spring but is still playing lacrosse for Maryland after missing his last two seasons due to injury. Coffman took the fall semester off while working for High Trail as a cyber security recruitment consultant. He recently accepted a full-time position with the company that he will continue after the spring semester.

Coffman says the program is changing people’s lives and it changed his. His conversations with Tyrie and the vast network of alumni allowed him to explore a career path that best fits his skill set.

“People are different, everyone's an individual,” Coffman said. “They have different skill sets, different personality traits that may be great for one market but not another one. Those opportunities to talk to those alumni and those mentors definitely allowed me to kind of hone in on what I wanted to do.” 

Coffman found himself on construction job sites and even landed an internship with a tech company out in Seattle. He learned a lot about different opportunities along the way in sales.

Coffman realized he had a passion for the communication aspect of work situations. He says Tyrie was one of the first people that made him realize that. Coffman acknowledges the job itself is important, but learning what is most important to oneself when looking for a job is equally as important. He was able to realize what was important to him through the mentorship program and has seen many others come to the same realization.

“Anybody I talked to who has been in contact with Mr. Tyrie or any of the other mentors, whether it's in telecommunication or medical sales, or whatever it might be, they all have a very similar experience,” Coffman said. “They come out on the other side learning a little bit about themselves and what they want to do with their future.”

All three say their opportunities were made possible by the diverse group of alumni mentors in the program.

“Maryland is a high-level program in all aspects. It is the standard,” Ripley said. “What we teach on the field is the same thing that we carry out in the classroom, off the field, career-wise and professionally as you get older.”

The mentorship program was started by John Tillman when he took the helm as the Terps’ head coach in 2011. He had previously spent the last 15 years coaching at the Naval Academy and Harvard. Coaching at the two prestigious schools influenced Tilman to utilize an unrivaled family of former athletes to impact the lives of his student-athletes at Maryland.

The program has been tweaked over the years, and Tyrie, who played for the Terps from 1975-78, took on a leadership role to provide a structure that is tailored to the student-athletes.

“We have a lot of selfless people, and you truly are a part of something bigger than yourself,” Tillman said. “Knowing that the brotherhood here is real. The fact that somebody played here 40 years ago, and you didn't grow up where they grew up, but they come here and they're calling you, reaching out to you trying to help you, to me is pretty cool.”

The mentorship program has and continues to make an impact with its alumni network of selfless and successful alumni. Whether it's curiosity or passion that motivates student-athletes, the Maryland men’s lacrosse family provides a unique opportunity for athletic and career-building excellence.

“We're going to work hard and challenge you and compete to try to make you the best player you can be and then also have a team that can challenge anyone in the country,” Tillman said. “We're going to work that hard in the classroom, we're going to work that hard also to help you have the same opportunities as if you went to any other school and we're going to make sure that the people that came before us who are really passionate, help you because they want to help you.”