By Kurt Masline

Photos by Minnie Stephenson

University of Maryland students joined the men’s basketball team in running the Midnight Mile at Ludwig Field Wednesday night.

The tradition began 50 years ago when men’s basketball coach Lefty Driesell had his team run a mile at midnight to prepare for the upcoming season, according to University of Maryland Athletics.

Students enjoyed the festivities from 11:15 p.m. Wednesday until just after 12:30 a.m. Thursday, which included free t-shirts, pizza, a raffle, and the chance to interact with men’s basketball players and staff.

Josh Mesa and Daniel Lamb, both of whom are freshman engineering majors, heard about the event from a friend, freshman public policy major Alex Kaplan, who heard about it from his dad.

“My dad works here on campus, so he was like ‘hey you should do this thing,’” Kaplan said.

Mesa and Lamb said the event sounded like it would be fun.

“We both did cross country in high school, so we were down,” Lamb said.

Mesa and Lamb decided to add a layer of competition to the mile, treating it as a chance to see who’s faster.

This was the third time Jake Downing, a senior finance major, ran the Midnight Mile, which didn’t happen last year because of the pandemic. Downing said he enjoys the opportunity to interact with players who he otherwise wouldn’t see around campus.

“It was really cool to get pictures with them and just see that they’re normal people you can talk to,” Downing said.

He said the event was more crowded than it was in previous years, which he thinks might be because of marketing on social media platforms, such as Instagram.

Jack Wyman, a junior majoring in supply chain management and marketing, found out about the event through Instagram. He said he had heard about the event before, but decided to run it for the first time this year. Wyman said it was great to see so many students bonding over something.

Junior criminology and criminal justice major Clayton Dean ran the mile with Wyman.

“He said he wanted to do it with somebody, so I was like ‘yeah okay, let’s do it,’” Dean said.

After the runners made their way to the starting line, Terps head coach Mark Turgeon thanked the crowd of more than 1,000 students, telling them that their attendance was a good kind of record to set.

A few minutes later, the runners had finished the mile and flocked to tables set up along the curve of the track to get pizza. A raffle winner was then announced and soon after, the event ended.

After finishing the mile, Downing said he felt pretty good.

“I’m excited for the season, I’ll tell you that,” he said.