- November 11, 2026
- By Lauren Frank ’27
Deborah Milani ’17 is no stranger to winning it all. The former University of Maryland lacrosse player captured a college athlete’s ultimate prize — a national title — not once, but three times.
So when she saw an online casting call for a game show featuring champions of all stripes, she thought she was a perfect fit.
Now a high school English language development teacher for Howard County Public Schools, she’s back in competitor mode on the FOX series “The Floor,” which pits 100 hopefuls against each other for a $250,000 grand prize. In the show’s sixth season, they’re all winners of other contests, from shows like “The Voice” and “The Amazing Race” to pumpkin growing and air guitar.
Like taking a draw at the beginning of a lacrosse game — Milani’s specialty as a player — she will face off one-to-one against opponents in a timed, picture-style trivia duel hosted by actor Rob Lowe.
“In sports and in big games, there’s so much pressure and outside noise,” she said. The same goes for “The Floor”: “If I want to stay long, I need to really take this seriously.”
The competition takes place on a giant lighted floor divided into 100 squares; contestants with different areas of expertise stand on each one. Winning individual trivia showdowns against contestants on neighboring squares allows players to expand their territory, while losers are eliminated. The competition continues until one contestant controls the entire floor.
It isn’t difficult to spot the NCAA Division I women’s lacrosse champion. It might be the vibrant green jumpsuit she wears that makes her pop out among the sea of people. It also doesn’t hurt that she was the first contestant this season to get a shoutout from Lowe, near the start of the first episode.
“I honestly am so proud to say that I went to Maryland and that I chose to go to Maryland to play lacrosse,” she said. Milani said playing midfield on the Maryland women’s lacrosse team for four years prepared her for performing under pressure in a game show.
With only a few days of notice before 12-hour filming began in a studio in Limerick, Ireland, Milani needed to master her expert category of female Olympians. She created a PowerPoint with more than 200 slides and wrote in a journal to keep the information fresh in her mind once she arrived on set.
“You have to be all in and studying any chance you can, or you're not going to make it far, so it's a lot of pressure.” Nevertheless, Milani would do it again in a heartbeat, and called competing on the show “the most incredible experience.”
Milani stretches before exercising her trivia muscles on the set of "The Floor."