The ground ball battle lasted just over 10 seconds. It felt like 10 years.

Jerry O’Connor, a senior defenseman for the Yale men’s lacrosse team, stripped Duke superstar Justin Guterding of the ball, initiating a scrum as the seconds ticked off the clock May 28 at Gillette Stadium.

The Bulldogs, up 13-11, kept chipping away. Chris Keating and Jason Alessi both attempted to scoop the ball, instead thrusting it to the right side of the crease, where Guterding picked it up and shot it off the outstretched stick of Yale’s freshman goalie Jack Starr.

The ball dropped again to the ground, Alessi scooped it with his long pole and ran off.

“That was the longest scrap for a ground ball we’ve ever had in our entire lives,” O’Connor said. “It felt like the ball was on the ground forever, and we finally heard the horn ring.”

Yale was the NCAA champion for the first time in school history — its only other championship coming in a three-way tie with Harvard and Princeton in 1883. A relentless, hard-working, step-by-step effort clinched the victory.

As his team sprinted onto the field in ecstasy, coach Andy Shay thought of those that helped his program reach the pinnacle of lacrosse. He looked to the crowd, where alums like Jon Reese, who starred on the 1990 team that advanced to championship weekend, and Brendan Gibson, the 2010 captain, were celebrating a title years in the making.

The emotional ride reached its peak, conveniently on national television. ESPN’s Paul Carcaterra, who had developed a relationship with Shay during his tenure, was interviewing the coach as part of the broadcast.

“This team just seemed different,” Carcaterra said. “1883 was the last time —“

“We’re national champs, dude!” Shay blurted out, cutting off his friend and grabbing him by the collar of his jacket, eyes fixed on the scoreboard.

Listen to @YaleLacrosse Head Coach Andy Shay after winning his first ever NCAA Lacrosse National Championship. #NCAALAX pic.twitter.com/4DHjIZAboa

— NCAA Lacrosse (@NCAALAX) May 28, 2018

Fifteen years of work building the Yale lacrosse brand, working through losing seasons and painful losses. It all hit Shay at that moment. A 15-year process was complete. Tom Beckett, Yale’s athletic director set to retire just days later, gave Shay his shot in 2003.

“The two biggest scams going are that I tricked my wife to marry me and I tricked [Beckett] into hiring me,” Shay said shortly after the game. “I actually get paid by Yale University to coach these kids. I have a pay stub to prove it. It’s unbelievable. I am the luckiest guy in the world.”

Shay’s ascendance to Yale wasn’t a matter of luck, however. The former Le Moyne midfielder graduated from the college in 1994 and dreamed of getting a Division I coaching gig. He started in the junior college ranks at SUNY Morrisville, coaching future pro lacrosse legend John Grant Jr. in 1995, before earning opportunities as an assistant coach at Delaware and UMass.

Shay caught the attention of the lacrosse community at UMass, where he coordinated a defense that allowed fewer than 10 goals per game in 2002 and 2003. After the 2003 season, Yale had a head coaching vacancy after playing a season with Daryl Delia as interim coach.

Beckett knew where to look.

“We had heard about this very talented young man who was working at UMass and doing tremendous work under coach Greg Cannella. We wanted to meet him,” Beckett said. “When he came to campus, he captivated the committee. He talked to the students on the team. It was a mandate. ‘You must bring Andy Shay to Yale, Mr. Beckett. Don’t forget this. This is what you have to do.’”

Not long after Shay’s meeting with Beckett and the hiring committee, Shay got the call. He was offered the position to lead a Yale program that had functioned for more than 100 years, but hadn’t seen major success since a 1990 final four berth.

The news was a shock to Shay, who was 33 at the time and was not sure if he’d get his shot.

“The morning I got offered the job, I was wondering if I was ever going to be a head coach,” Shay said. “I had the perception that I was getting too old to wait forever to be a head coach. When I walked out of the building and I saw Tom Beckett, he [said he] thought I was young to be a head coach.”

Shay wasted no time setting expectations for Yale — the goal was a national championship. As farfetched as the idea may have sounded out loud, he had it in his head from day one.

But progress was not always so linear. The first six years were testy. The Bulldogs went 8-28 in the Ivy League between 2004 and 2009 — a stretch that didn’t help the confidence of the first-time coach. 

“I had a lot of self-doubt when we struggled,” he said. “I didn’t handle losses very well at all. It was kind of like a little bit of traction, then a little bit of struggle, and a little bit of traction. I had to take a hard look at myself and how I was doing things.”

Shay knew he needed to inject something new into his program.

“He had to learn a new breed of player at Yale,” said Brendan Gibson, captain of Yale’s 2010 team. “You have kids that are no stranger to hard work and putting in the time and the effort. They are not used to not having that pay off in the wins and losses column. Early on, he was having issues dealing with that. No one likes to lose, but he learned that Yale lacrosse players are a little more receptive when you engage them in the full process.”

Shay started reaching out to everyone, regardless of how much playing time they got. He’d ask his players about life and what he could do to help them with job applications. He let Gibson and the team have “Tunes Tuesdays” where they could blast music throughout practice. “‘Who do I have to email?’” was his signature line.

He invested in his players’ lives, and let them hold each other accountable. As Gibson progressed from a freshman to a senior, he began to see his teammates step up, a transformation that hinted at future success.

Something clicked in 2010. Yale went 10-4 and finished with a share of the Ivy League regular season title. The Ivy League tournament was the Elis’ first postseason berth since 1992. The season ended with a loss to Princeton, but Shay’s team expected more.

“Sure, there was happiness, but there we weren’t satisfied,” Gibson said. “My brother [Matt Gibson] was still there. He was like, ‘This is B.S. We should be playing another week here.’ When you start to get that feeling, the next year you’re probably going to get improvement, because they’re going to work harder.”

The success continued from 2011 to 2014, where the Bulldogs went a combined 42-18 with four conference tournament appearances.

Teammates started holding one another accountable for their wellness. They created a Facebook page called “The Boneyard,” where they posted photos and summaries of their meals and workouts. 

It took a full buy-in by the Bulldogs players for the ascent to continue. And it helped to have Ben Reeves, a former Hobart commit that scored 585 goals for Macedon (N.Y.), on the way.

Shay knew he had something in Reeves.

“We felt like there wasn’t anybody on the all-time scoring list in New York that wasn’t incredible in college,” Shay said. “We figured he was going to be in there. Even if we missed, we knew he was going to be a good player for us. We hit the bullseye way more than we thought possible.”

Reeves set Yale’s freshman scoring record with 43 goals en route to Ivy League title and an 11-5 record in 2015. He became a Tewaaraton finalist his sophomore year — one in which Yale finished 13-3 and won the league again. He dropped 79 points last season, and the Bulldogs won their third straight Ivy League title.

It was an unprecedented run of success of Yale, but it couldn’t get past the first round of the NCAA tournament. In 2015, it fell to Maryland 8-7, then followed it with a 13-10 loss at home to Navy in 2016. Last season, the Bulldogs blew a three-goal lead to Syracuse en route to another early exit.

Still, their confidence never wavered.

“I told Ben after the Syracuse game last year, ‘Hey, if we win a first-round game, it’s over. We’re winning the national championship,’” O’Connor said. “It was a bit of a mental block.”

With Reeves returning for his senior season and veterans in place all over the field — Yale had six players chosen in the Major League Lacrosse draft — expectations were high for this year’s team. The Bulldogs were a top-five team in preseason, but they were more focused on building chemistry as a unit.

The camaraderie combined with the talent allowed Yale to start 7-1. It eventually rolled through the Ivy League undefeated and took over the No. 1 ranking in the Nike/US Lacrosse Top 20. The Bulldogs were, again, reaching new heights, but Shay needed to find a way to keep his team grounded.

When Yale fell to Cornell in the Ivy League final, Shay saw an opportunity to remind his team that it wasn’t invincible. He cut up the plays that went wrong and posted them on YouTube. He called it the “Humility Fuel Station.”

“Whenever you feel like you’re getting too good, I want you to watch this,” Shay told his team. 

“Whenever we thought we were some great team, that’s when things would fall apart,” O’Connor said. “It’s only after those losses, that pushed us into the greater stretch of what this team was.”

And what this team became was historic. Yale blew past UMass in the first round to shatter that glass ceiling. The next step was a tight win over Loyola in the NCAA quarterfinals, sending the Bulldogs back to the final four for the first time in 28 years.

Yale did not look back, scoring 20 goals in a win over Albany to advance to its first-ever final. The 13-11 win over Duke sealed it — the Bulldogs reached a level many believed wasn’t possible.

Shay couldn’t help but think about his first full recruiting class in 2008. It didn’t reach the heights of the 2018 team, but it helped build the foundation of what was to come. 

“It breaks my heart that those guys did what these guys do and it didn’t work out for them,” he said. “You peel back the layers, and you’d see the same stuff.”

The standard was set when Shay arrived in 2003, but it took 15 years for it to come together. It was a monumental achievement for a coach that thought he might never get an opportunity. 

Now he’s achieved his goal — but don’t think for a second he’s finished planning ahead, trying to build on the culture he created.

“We’re just trying to figure out how to turn the page on this and get ready for 2019,” he said. “We’re not going to do that anytime soon. We’re not that crazy.”