- February 17, 2026
- By Karen Shih ’09
Of the 14,500 diehard fans at the final Terps men’s basketball game at Cole Field House in March 2002, just one could claim accurately she’d been there from the start.
In 1955, before a single point was scored, Ceil Speake ’73 had toddled through the then-new building with her grandfather, Cecil Speake, who oversaw the postwar construction boom on campus.
“My roots run deep,” she said. “That’s my earliest childhood memory.”
That spurred a lifetime of devotion to the University of Maryland—“I didn’t want to go anywhere else”—and trips as far as Hawaii and Italy to cheer on the Terps basketball and football teams.
She’s one of the Terps who responded to a University of Maryland Alumni Association post and reminisced about the stubs they’ve kept for decades. Here are our favorite stories from alums who shared why they kept one (or dozens) of special tickets:
Lifelong Terps fan Sean Mitchell has collected tickets to almost every bowl game the team has played, including games going back to the 1950s. Mitchell, center, attended the away game against Oregon last year with fellow alums Phil Davis '78, left, and Matt Wolnitzek '83.
Sean Mitchell ’82
Back when flipping on the radio was the only way to follow Maryland football games, a teenage Sean Mitchell tracked every win of the undefeated 1976 team—a season capped by a Sports Illustrated cover and a trip to the Cotton Bowl.
So it’s no surprise that decades later, he’s curated a vast collection of Terps football bowl game tickets from 29 appearances. He started with his own, when he attended the 2001 Orange Bowl and 2002 Peach Bowl. “It was fun just being there, hanging out with all the fans and going to the parties,” he said.
A few years later, he started poking around on eBay, wondering if he could find tickets from other games, and got hooked. He started going to sports collector shows and searching on Facebook, and now, he’s just missing two: The 1950 Gator Bowl (he lost out on an auction last year) and the 1984 Sun Bowl. His favorites are the older ones with fun illustrations, and he’s sad to think that the age of digital ticketing has put an end to his collecting.
As a Spokane, Washington, resident, it’s not easy for Mitchell to get to a Terps home game, but the expansion of the Big Ten into the West Coast has helped bring the team closer to him.
Paul Schrantz as a student with then-girlfriend Kathleen Clark Schrantz '90; the couple has been married 34 years and still attend as many Terps games as they can. Bottom right, Schrantz's saved ticket to the game where men's basketball Coach Lefty Driesell got his 500th win.
Paul Schrantz ’87
Finally watching famed men’s basketball coach Lefty Driesell get his milestone win at Cole—even if actual game turned out to be a total “cupcake city” blowout—was a moment Paul Schrantz wanted to commemorate forever.
“Being a young person, I couldn’t even comprehend what he had to do as a coach to get to 500 wins,” said Schrantz, a lifelong Terps fan who recently returned to the university to work at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. Driesell had stalled at 499, losing several games in a row, until on Feb. 21, 1985, he led the Terps to a 91-38 rout of injury-plagued Towson. “I even heard that the Towson coach brought a cake for Lefty because he knew he was going to lose!”
Despite the lopsided win, the energy in Cole was still electric, he recalled. “There was just this sense of accomplishment, pride that everyone had in him and everything he did for the university,” said Schrantz. “He just had this aura about him—he brought panache. Everyone always got better working with Lefty, even if you were the 12th guy on the team.”
Ceil Speake's prized ticket collection includes ones from the NCAA Final Four, the ACC Tournament and the final game at Cole Field House. Bottom right, Speake is pictured fourth from left next to then-men's basketball Coach Gary Williams, along with some of her buddies who made the trip to Greensboro.
Ceil Speake '73
Whether watching star point guard Steve Blake steal a ball from Duke in the early aughts or a devastating triple-overtime loss to North Carolina State under Driesell during the 1970s, Speake will never forget the thrill and energy of the crowds at Cole. But her ticket collection reflects her support of the Terps beyond College Park, from Final Four games in 2001 and 2002 to the ACC Tournament in 2004.
For the latter, the men’s basketball team was seeded No. 6 in Greensboro, North Carolina and not expected to make a deep run. But she and a crew of diehard friends, several of whom had traveled to Atlanta in 2002 together, had rented an RV to drive down. “By halftime, we were down to NC State by a bunch of points, and my friend was ready to sell his tickets and leave.”
But luckily, they stuck it out, and the Terps pulled through the semis—then took down rival Duke in the championship game. “We actually brought champagne, so we were ready to celebrate when we won!”