The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Student went for free food, landed job on football team
It’s one of those series of events in which everything just happened to work out. One Thursday evening in August, University of Maryland sophomore Ryan Sartori and his girlfriend attended an on-campus event that featured free food, along with a chance to meet Michael Locksley, the Terrapins’ head football coach, and athletic director Damon Evans
Before the evening was over, he’d landed a gig as an offensive assistant with the Terrapins football team.
Sartori loves sports, and in the town hall-style setup he had the opportunity to ask Locksley questions about the Maryland offense. So impressive was Sartori’s understanding of football that Locksley’s executive assistant asked the 19-year-old if he’d be interested in the volunteer role.
Sartori excitedly texted the news to his parents.
“Are you freaking kidding me?” Sartori’s dad, Lou, responded.
“It’s not necessarily that he’s in the right place at the right time,” Lou Sartori said of his son, “but he’s not hesitant to introduce himself or to talk to folks.” He recalled a time when he had some friends over to watch a Giants game back when his son was about 8. After a goalline play, Ryan explained why he thought they should have run something different. Impressed by the kid’s understanding of the game, a friend of Lou’s asked: “Is this for real?”
A few days after getting the offer, Sartori stopped by the football facility to meet offensive coordinator Scottie Montgomery and other position coaches.
Montgomery told Sartori to grab a dry-erase marker. A staffer in the room wore a shirt with the state of Maryland pictured, so Montgomery instructed Sartori to draw that on the whiteboard. Then he asked him to draw an outline of New Jersey from memory.
Perhaps the coaches wanted to see how neatly Sartori could copy drawings, since part of his job involves replicating their ideas for plays. Or maybe they also wanted to “mess with me a little bit,” Sartori said. Either way, Sartori met their standards.
Sartori had never seriously considered a career in sports, though his dream job is general manager of the New York Giants. He’s a finance major, and he thinks he might one day work in investment banking.
Still, Sartori said he enjoys thinking about football — why some plays work and others don’t. Lou Sartori said his son has always been a question-asker — about football or anything else. That’s how he learned the game. And that’s what it took for him to land a role on the Maryland staff.