Oct. 28, 2002 was not a good day for the Blizzards, Robin Sawyer noted in his match log. Weak shooting performances from a cluster of players squelched any chance the youth soccer team had at a victory.

Sawyer meticulously chronicled every game of his youngest daughter’s soccer season that year: the final score, who played well, who faltered. What should it matter if the girls he was coaching were in elementary school?

For all of its eccentricities, his method worked, his daughter told the crowd gathered in the University of Maryland’s Memorial Chapel for his memorial service Friday.

“Those girls are here today,” Gillian Sawyer said, her voice muffled slightly by tears. “Flying in from Austin, Texas, and Miami, Florida, for a man who coached them when they were 8 years old.”

Gillian Sawyer’s former teammates were joined by hundreds of other mourners — all filing into the chapel, bundled up against the cold and stomping snow from their shoes — to celebrate the life of Robin Sawyer, a former professor at this university who died Jan. 21 after a year-long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 68.

Sawyer, who made appearances on The Today Show and The Tyra Banks Show, was known across the country as an expert on birth control and the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases. He was a beloved husband and the father of four daughters. He was a potato chip enthusiast, a voracious reader and a proud Englishman who believed in the value of a strong cup of tea in the morning.

And for those lucky enough to win a spot in his human sexuality course at this university — which typically had more than 100 students on the waitlist each semester, according to the school of public health — Sawyer was an incessantly passionate teacher who delighted in challenging his students’ assumptions about sex and catching them off-guard with dirty jokes.

Before retiring in 2017, Sawyer served as an associate professor in the public health school’s behavioral and community health department for 33 years.

During that time, he earned numerous awards for his ability to connect with students, including the prestigious Regent’s Award for Teaching Excellence. The enthusiasm he brought to his teaching prompted studentswho hadn’t been able to register for his course to sneak in to hear his lectures.

“It also helped that in his class, you got to show up and hear about sex all day in a weird British accent,” Gillian Sawyer said, drawing a laugh from the audience.

Tina Nguyen, who graduated from this university in 2014 with a degree in public health science, recalled that Robin Sawyer made the classroom for his human sexuality course a safe space without ever having to say it was one. He welcomed students to ask questions about sex they’d always been afraid to ask.

Nguyen said it was his health education course that ended up being her favorite. While the class entailed public speaking, something she regarded with horror, Sawyer crafted a classroom climate that was so open and relaxed that it put her at ease.

“It didn’t feel like a class,” Nguyen said. “It felt like an uncle or family member giving us advice.”

Sawyer was active beyond the classroom as well: He gave more than 450 presentations on college campuses across the country and worked with the NCAA to develop a program on sexual assault and date rape for student-athletes.

Convinced he could make much better sex ed videos than those on the market, Sawyer wrote and produced five films on topics ranging from the importance of communication in relationships to HIV/AIDS prevention. Those films are now used at 150 universities across the country.

When his eldest daughter, Katherine Sawyer, arrived at this university as a freshman, the fact she was related to someone she described as a “veritable rock star” eased her transition to college life — with the exception of the odd frat party.

“What 18-year-old girl doesn’t want her first conversation with a boy at a party to go like this: ‘Sawyer? Like Dr. Sawyer? That’s your dad? Yeah, he told us you were coming here, and he told us never to talk to you,’” Katherine Sawyer recalled, to more laughter from the attendees.

Before Robin Sawyer rose to stardom, he paid his dues as a doctoral student on this campus in the 1980s, raising two daughters as a single father in a one-bedroom apartment. Sawyer did it all, while still juggling a fledgling career, Katherine Sawyer recounted: He made lunches, mastered the art of the pony tail and wrote little notes on napkins.

And time and time again, he appeared in the stands of his daughters’ soccer games. Robin Sawyer could always be counted on to show up — to dance shows, to theater performances and to graduations.

“He drove two hours one-way twice a week to see all of my college games, even my freshman year when I missed the entire season with a torn ACL,” said Gillian Sawyer. “That year was really hard for me, and it was such a comfort knowing I could look up into the stands and see my dad heckling the refs.”

His death came as a shock — like the end of a book that happened at warp speed, said his wife, Anne Anderson-Sawyer, whom he met after he became a professor at this university. Still, over the course of the year he was sick, love and support poured in from every direction.

“It rained cards,” Anderson-Sawyer said. They were fierce, tender, uplifting and scattered with the occasional crude joke. Friends, neighbors and colleagues delivered food and carted cozy blankets and DVDs to their front door.

“You, our dear friends, can rest assured that your love and devotion meant everything to us,” Anderson-Sawyer said, choking up.

Grief, the Sawyer family said, is a messy thing. But they take comfort in knowing that Robin Sawyer’s life was a life well-lived — and that the people who remember him can channel his values.

“Rise to a challenge,” Gillian Sawyer told the crowd. “Read more books, take a walk on the beach, make an inappropriate joke, watch a Tottenham game and definitely curse more if they lose. Because [in] each small gesture, with each reminder of what he gave to this world, his legacy will live on through each of us.”

Staff writer Carmen Molina Acosta contributed to this article.