Maryland’s Perry Hills is living the dream, earlier than expected

Perry Hills steps down from his dormitory stairs, sleepy-eyed and stretching, barely visible in the early morning darkness. Decked out in black Under Armour gear and a backward flat-brimmed red cap with “Terps” written in cursive, Hills wishes he had worn long sleeves. It’s 6:20 a.m. on a Wednesday and Maryland’s freshman quarterback is cold. ¶ The sun not yet visible over the College Park campus, Hills’s day begins with a 15-minute walk over mowed grass and broken glass, past a lone janitor emptying the trash and singing, “La, la, it’s wake-up time!” ¶ Never a morning person, Hills nonetheless refuses to rely on coffee or energy drinks. These days run on willpower. Maybe hot chocolate, too. ¶“There’s points where you’re pretty tired, but you have to fight through it,” Hills says. “If the coaches are here, running off little sleep, I have to step it up a little bit. No time for a nap. I have no choice. It’s got to work.”

Six feet 3 and unassuming, with cheeks that groove upward when he laughs, Hills maintains a hectic schedule that swarms him like oncoming pass rushers. The day directs him from meeting rooms to dining halls to auditoriums, everywhere but beneath the covers on his twin bed.

His first stop is Gossett Team House for a 7 a.m. lift, where Hills enters the weight room beneath a sign that demands, “What are you willing to sacrifice?” Then comes breakfast with multiple protein shakes for prescribed weight gain. Three classes follow, which only brings him to noon.

This is the life Hills dreamed about. Yet he never imagined it would come quite this soon.

Reveling in anonymity

It’s 10:03 a.m. and Hills is hunched over an L-shaped desk in a red plastic chair bolted to the carpet, six rows from the front in a windowless lecture hall. After reviewing the syllabus on an overhead projector, the Sociology 100 professor begins taking attendance, a new practice that day.

“Lauren? . . . Ethan? . . . Brianna? . . . Perry? Perry Hills?”

His name elicits no additional attention. It’s the same deal when Hills walks through an activities fair with his teammates, or when he eats lunch in the dining hall, scarfing down chicken tenders and fries. The starting quarterback at a Bowl Championship Series school doesn’t expect classmates to notice, nor does he particularly want them to.

Hills has heard stories about how Pat McAfee, the Indianapolis Colts punter who was born in Plum, Pa., just a half-hour away from Hills’s home town, received death threats after missing crucial field goals while in college at West Virginia. Anonymity suits Hills just fine.

His mother, Lori Hills, has a story about her son’s shunning of the spotlight. One day, Perry saw a television commercial in which NFL players stage a football game in a forest clearing flooded with light. Perry turned away from the television, and looked at his mother and said, “I want to play in the forest.”

There are no name tags outside the dormitory suite Hills shares with three other freshman football players. Those were stripped off early in the school year to prevent anyone from knowing who lived there. Inside, newspaper clippings featuring Hills cling to the wall of the common area; Hills’s roommates know how to embarrass him.