“We built the foundation.”

That’s what head coach Connor Buczek ’15 MBA ’17 said after bringing his alma mater within three goals of a national title.

The year is 2022 . Memorial Day. It’s CJ Kirst’s first season. Buczek is 28. East Hartford, Connecticut is the stage.

Cornell is the No. 7 seed in the 2022 National Collegiate Athletic Association Tournament. The Red roared to Championship Monday, making its first appearance in the title game in over 10 years.

To slay the beast means to upend No. 1 Maryland –– the undefeated goliath from the Big 10, a blue blood in lacrosse, led by an unfathomably legendary coach in John Tillman ’91.

Cornell comes close.

It finishes with the game's final five goals.

When the final buzzer sounds, sticks fly into the air. Gloves, too. While Maryland celebrates its fourth title, the Red kneels down in agony.

Later, Buczek makes his peace.

“We built the foundation,” he says.

Three years later, Cornell is back where it belongs. It will play on the last day of the NCAA men’s lacrosse season — Memorial Day. The Red is tasked with the very same team that put a dagger through its heart in 2022.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Cornell and Maryland will duel again, only this time, there’s a new No. 1. The Red has sat atop the NCAA for seven weeks and has been nearly impenetrable. Cornell got its revenge on the one team that soiled its potential undefeated season — Penn State — in the national semifinals on Saturday.

After Maryland defeated Syracuse in a semifinal matchup later that afternoon, Tillman, when asked about playing Cornell for the title, chuckled under his breath.

“I definitely would like to play somebody else for sure,” he said. “They’ve been the best team all year.”

That’s high praise coming from the coach who led his team to a perfect 18-0 record in 2022.

The script has flipped, but few would ever consider a team coached by Tillman an underdog. The title game is a chance for Cornell to uphold its top ranking, and a chance for Maryland to take back what was once theirs.

Ever since that fateful day in Connecticut three years ago, something has been building in Ithaca.

That “foundation,” the one built in 2022, is what Buczek believes aided it to the title game three years later.

But in reality, that foundation has always been there.

“We stand on the shoulders of giants,” Buczek said. “We're upholding a very long and proud tradition, and we're just trying to make sure it's the best version of it that it can possibly be.”

It long predates Buczek’s time as both a coach and a player. One of the most storied programs in lacrosse, tradition oozes from Cornell lacrosse from the inside out. It’s in the hallowed halls of Schoellkopf Hall to the turf the team practices on, where ‘21’s are plastered across the scoreboard in honor of George Boiardi ’04.

Boiardi died on March 17, 2004 on Schoellkopf Field after being struck in the chest by a lacrosse ball. Since then, his memory has been honored through his number at the time, 21, and through the ‘Hard Hat.’

Though the tradition of the Hard Hat originated in 1999, it evolved into something larger than life following Boiardi’s death. Former head coach Jeff Tambroni originally introduced the hat, a red construction cap, as a measure of heart and grit — what the team needed to bring to each and every game.

“The Hard Hat was a great symbol of what we wanted to represent in every practice and game,” Tambroni told The Sun in 2007. “We make sure it’s with us every day.”

Midway through the fall season, a player is selected to carry the Hard Hat for the spring season. The player is chosen not based on playing ability, but on how they embody a “ blue-collar approach ” to lacrosse: “The recipient is someone that the coaches feel demonstrates a blue-collar approach to the game of lacrosse; he is driven and selfless, not the most talented player on the field, but consistently the hardest worker. He puts the team first, and embodies how the coaches want Cornell players to act and respond on or off the field.”

Boiardi carried the Hard Hat during his freshman year. A four-year starter and captain when he died, the Hard Hat soon evolved into a remembrance of Boiardi, whose stall has remained inside the Cornell locker room at Schoellkopf Hall ever since.

It has been 21 years since Boiardi’s death. On Monday, Cornell will take the field looking to secure its first national title since 1977. Buczek will likely don a baseball cap with the ‘21’ front and center, and the Hard Hat will still sit on the sidelines.

On paper, the stakes are there: the No. 1 team in the nation will look to get revenge on the team that ended its season three years ago.

Kirst and his fellow seniors started their careers with a sour taste in their mouths. They want to change that ending.

Yet as the late legendary coach Richie Moran once said, which would later be coined as a catchphrase for the men’s lacrosse team, “It’s great to be here!” The coach on the other sideline on Monday, Tillman, knows that phrase well — he played for Moran.

21 years since Boiardi’s passing, Monday means more for Cornell than a chance for a trophy.

“[It] would be pretty incredible. … It’s certainly a good omen,” an emotional Buczek said. “And now it's up to us to do our part to make sure that the story comes to a storybook ending.”