New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Seasons lost to pandemic hit Yale lacrosse especially hard
Yale had one player at its practices this semester at Reese Stadium. Can there be a lonelier thought? Can there be a more vivid picture of how hard COVID-19 struck one of college lacrosse’s powers?
In two weeks the best teams from the three divisions in NCAA men’s lacrosse will gather for a championship weekend at Rentschler Field.
Lacrosse has grown greatly nationwide. It’s already important in Connecticut. State kids, especially from Fairfield County, dot the rosters of the nation’s top programs. Fairfield will host the event against next year and these have been circle-the-dates for Memorial Day weekend since first announced in 2017.
Yale, of course, will not be on the field at the Rent, although three of coach Andy Shay’s top players from the back-to-back finalists could be for Denver. COVID wiped out everyone’s sports in the spring of 2020. Days before the Ivy League finally canceled its spring schedule again this year, the Yale team, in limbo and seeing it had insufficient numbers enrolled, collectively decided not to push forward in 2021.
Think of a sport. Men or women. Coast to coast. It’s hard to name a college program hit any harder than Yale lacrosse.
“Who knows what would have happened, but I felt our ’20 team was well ahead of the 2018 and 2019 teams when they canceled the season,” Shay said. “I thought we were very different. That last game (against Virginia) in ’19 was a punch in the mouth, a shock to end like that. I think the guys were taking it personally.”
The Bulldogs had won their first NCAA championship at Gillette Stadium over Duke in 2018. Tech
nically, it was their second national title. They were tri-champions in 1883 when Chester A. Arthur was president and 48-year-old author Mark Twain lived only five miles from where Rentschler now stands.
That afternoon in Foxborough was a joyous one. There was Shay, fighting tears, wrapped around his assistants in a hug. There was the gang of players holding up the championship trophy and bringing it over to their fans, their alumni, their families in the stands. There was Handsome Dan XVIII, barking, having a Boola Boola time.
It was doubly emotional for Shay. Tom Beckett was retiring as athletic director, and this would be Shay’s great parting gift for the man who took a chance on him 15 years earlier.
In 2019, the Bulldogs again advanced to the championship game before Virginia dethroned them in Philly. In 2020, they had lost to UMass, but also had wins over Michigan and No. 1 Penn State and Shay felt his team growing.
“In this year and a half off, I’ve thought about it a lot,” Shay said. “What if the 2020 team could have finished? I feel like it would maybe have been our best team ever. And the ’21 team was up there, too.”
Yale was practicing last March 11 when athletic director Vicky Chun came over to speak to him. He knew it wouldn’t be good news. It wasn’t. He called his guys together and told them the season was over.
“Guys, myself included, had tears streaming down our faces,” Shay said. “We scrimmaged one last time. If the university found out we continued practice, they probably would have been disappointed. I just felt like we had to play. It was therapeutic.”
The Ivy League is complicated. It long has had a rule that graduate students can’t compete in athletics. Graduating seniors Jackson Morrill and Lucas Colter wanted their chance for the extra season the NCAA provided. They wanted to play together. Morrill’s dad, Mike, had a long playing and coaching association with Denver coach Bill Tierney.
“I also have a close relationship with Bill and he has been a mentor and friend forever,” Shay said. “I felt like they could definitely enjoy their experience there. More than anything I wanted these guys to have a chance to play.”
Morrill and Colter are working on their master’s degrees.
TD Irelan, the greatest faceoff man in college history and No. 1 MLL draft pick in 2020, tried to stay at Yale for his last year. As it became apparent it wasn’t happening in the winter, he was left with limited options.
“Other schools had already started, fortunately Denver is a trimester school,” Shay said. “He was able to join his buddies. The one thing I told him was make sure you get your Yale degree. They worked out the credits.”
These aren’t three ordinary players. This is like three stars from Duke basketball going to play at, oh, Arizona for the season. All three would have stayed at Yale if conference and school policies around eligibility had worked in their favor.
A fourth Yale player, Brian Ward, went to Rutgers as a graduate transfer. Rutgers has advanced in the NCAA tournament, but Ward is out with an injury.
In mid-February, the Ivy League decided to grant a waiver for graduating seniors to compete as fulltime graduate students at their current Ivy institutions in 2021-22 academic years. Unfortunately, Yale lacrosse players had to enroll and quarantine by Feb. 1. Too little. Too late. Players, wanting to get an extra year, decided to take leaves of absence.
“The guys did not have confidence we could get to Phase 4 so we made a collective decision,” Shay said. “Some papers said the kids wanted to forgo the season. That’s not entirely true. They wanted to play at Yale. Our league and school had different rules.”
Ivy League coaches have to be careful how they answer. They have bosses. It’s also my job to ask. How do you think the Ivy League and school handled the COVID policies?
“We’re a small piece of what this place is,” Shay said. “The university has a greater consideration for the entire university and from a public health perspective, that’s a decision they have to make. I don’t fault them for having to be consistent across the university. That’s just the way it is. That’s kind of how the league and school has operated for a long time. I wasn’t necessarily surprised. Disappointed, but look, I get it. This is bigger than anything any of us have dealt with.
“From my perspective, all the things they had to worry about with testing and
everything else I can see how they might not want to concern themselves with winning another national championship.”
Including the players arriving from high school, Shay anticipates 55 players on next year’s roster, including 43 returners. He does not believe COVID has hurt Yale’s recruiting.
“People have that theory, but I think we have done our due diligence with guys who are out there,” Shay said. “Kids still want to go to Yale. Kids still want to play high-level lacrosse. This year is different in a lot of ways. You’ve got a little bit of free agency going on. I don’t think we will take a step back, but we’ll see. More than half the roster has never played a Yale game. That’s going to be tricky.”
What Shay knows is expectations will remain high. What he knows is his staff has done a strong job of keeping players involved with meetings and leadership projects. They watch video by position groups.
Attackman Skyler Wilson, class of ’24, was the only one on campus taking classes in practice. Amazing.
“We call them ‘indivduals’ in normal circumstances,” Shay said. “We did a semester worth of individuals with him. Three coaches working with Skyler (three times a week besides lifting). After a while you run out of stuff to tell the kid, plus he is ultra-talented. He got a lot better this semester, that’s for sure.”
Shay said when his kids were born his golf handicap went up. With more time to play, he figured it would go back down. Did it? “Not much,” he said. “For me personally, this has been a challenge. I keep telling people I haven’t hit rock bottom yet. I think a lot of that has to do with the fact I have a great family. I have been able to spend time with my kids and my wife.
“And I think the team we have coming back is exciting. To that end, it helps me get through this year when everyone else gets to play. We have a chance to be pretty good next year.” And this year? “Getting to a Final Four is really hard,” Andy Shay said, “but if you want to say we’d be in it, I’m not going to argue.”
So we’ll say it. And we’ll also say, even among Ivy Leaguers, there’s only one way to put it: COVID sucks.