Fifteen years ago Friday, the Maryland men’s lacrosse job opened for the first time in nearly a decade, and Kip Fulks had a coach in mind. Why wouldn’t the guy once known as the Wayne Gretzky of lacrosse be a candidate?

Fulks, who played for the Terps in the mid-1990s, had idolized the coach as a kid, along with almost everyone else who picked up a stick. Fulks had gotten to know the coach at Maryland, where he’d served as an assistant under women’s coach Cindy Timchal. Fulks had played with the coach in the National Lacrosse League. He’d worked with the coach and his brother at Under Armour, which Fulks co-founded. And, perhaps most important, Fulks knew the coach was, at one point, interested in the job.

“Everybody was always waiting for Gary’s name to get announced,” Fulks recalled. But Gary Gait, an enduring icon in the sport, would not be coming home again. Because Gait was already back home, building the women’s program at his alma mater, Syracuse.

Fulks didn’t know much then about the coach Maryland would go on to hire. He couldn’t guess that Dave Cottle’s successor in College Park would restore the program to its old glory, filling its calendar with Memorial Day weekend trips and its trophy case with titles. Few foresaw Maryland becoming “the standard” in college lacrosse, as Cornell coach Connor Buczek put it Tuesday. Even now, the coach taking the Terps to their 11th Final Four in 15 seasons is surprised he got a job interview in the first place.

“But Maryland called,” John Tillman said Thursday. “And if Maryland calls, you listen.”

As the second-seeded Terps prepare for their NCAA tournament semifinal at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, Tillman has become synonymous with the sport’s championship weekend. He is no Gait — who, as it turns out, will be on the other sideline Saturday, coaching the sixth-seeded Syracuse men — but his modern-era success has almost no parallels. A .779 winning percentage at Maryland. Fifteen straight NCAA tournament appearances. Two national titles, including the program’s first crown in over five decades and an undefeated season in 2022. Eighty-eight All-American selections, the most in the country since 2011.

Tillman’s ascendance as one of the best coaches in college sports has been so overwhelming, his actual hiring has been rendered a footnote in his career. But what a consequential — and curious — decision it’s become. There was little indication from Tillman’s three years at Harvard that his next 15 would look like this. And there was little indication from Tillman that he was even keen on returning to the lacrosse-mad state of Maryland.

“I wasn’t really looking for a job,” Tillman said. “And listen, I’m a realist. We were 20-19 at Harvard [from 2008 to 2010], and I candidly said that to the athletic director as I was getting interviewed. Again, I wasn’t necessarily seeking out a job, because we felt like we’d only spent three years at Harvard, so there’s more work to do. Yet things kind of went quickly.”

The early indications were that Maryland and AD Debbie Yow would look elsewhere. In early June, weeks after Cottle resigned following a fourth straight season without a Final Four appearance, Inside Lacrosse reported that the school had focused its search on four candidates: Cornell head coach Jeff Tambroni, Albany head coach Scott Marr, Stevenson head coach Paul Cantabene and Syracuse assistant coach Lelan Rogers. (Gait had already turned down interest from Maryland, saying he expected to coach his daughter in college.)

But by mid-June, none were finalists for the job. The only candidates confirmed to have interviewed with Maryland’s search committee were Tillman and Virginia associate head coach Marc Van Arsdale.

“A lot of the tone at that time … around the decision to go after new leadership was about, basically, does Maryland know what it’s asking for?” Michael Lipitz, who chaired the search as a senior associate AD at Maryland, said with a chuckle. The Terps had made three Final Fours in Cottle’s nine seasons but hadn’t won an NCAA title since 1975, lapped by schools like Syracuse, Johns Hopkins and Virginia.

“There was a lot of, I don’t know, consternation about: Is there someone who’s willing to take on that challenge of expectations? But I think this idea that wanting more for Maryland lacrosse, believing that Maryland lacrosse could achieve routinely at a higher level, that was our belief.”

Lipitz, now the AD at George Washington, declined to identify the other coaches Maryland interviewed during its search. But he acknowledged that “people, internally and externally ... certainly had favorites.” Those candidates, he said, were the “usual suspects.”

Tillman was a dark horse. He’d served as an assistant coach for over a decade at Navy under Richie Meade before Harvard hired him in 2007. But in Tillman’s three years with the Crimson Tide, they finished above .500 just once and never qualified for the NCAA tournament. Tillman’s biggest wins were coming on the recruiting trail, where he was slowly accumulating blue-chip talent.

Brian Reese, an All-American defenseman at Maryland, a longtime former player and executive in professional lacrosse and the husband of current Terps women’s lacrosse coach Cathy Reese, was among Tillman’s biggest advocates during the search, Lipitz recalled. Reese believed Tillman profiled as the kind of leader Maryland needed.

“Then you start talking to him and then you meet him, and that’s what comes through,” Lipitz said of Tillman. “It’s like, yes, not only does he get it, but he’s got that quiet intensity about him. And that’s what you gravitate to in terms of someone who is about the right things, is going to do it the right way, but just ultracompetitive, and you just believe that he’s going to figure out a way to get it over the top.”

Both sides needed convincing. Tillman was reluctant to leave Harvard. Yow recalled in an email that he faced a “genuine dilemma” over whether to abandon what he and his staff were building in the Ivy League. But Tillman’s hesitation only endeared himself further to Yow.

“I value loyalty,” she wrote, “and it was clear that leaving Harvard at that time would be a challenge because of the loyalty he had to their team.”

Over dinner at Annapolis’ Chart House Prime and a handful of other meetings, Tillman laid out his vision for the program. Asked Thursday about his pitch to Maryland officials, he recalled the impact his high school and college coaches had made on his personal and athletic development. Tillman knew he’d be expected to win in College Park, and perhaps win big, but “when you’re an educator or you’re in college or high school,” he said, “there’s a lot more you do.”

He added: “We’ve got to make sure these guys do a good job in school. We’ve got to make sure they develop really good habits that help them in their jobs. ... These kids are banking on us getting them ready for the next 40 years, and I love the challenge. There’s a lot more than just, again, teaching them how to run fast and shoot hard, but I know they’re banking on us setting them up for success, just like the coaches I had. So those are things I really emphasized.”

Fulks said he was “pro-Gary” when Maryland’s coaching search started, part of what he called a “little bit of a groundswell” of support to bring Gait back to Maryland. He remembered Tillman from his playing days and had gotten to know him at Navy, though his “visibility” as a coaching candidate, Fulks recalled, was otherwise limited.

But when Maryland announced Tillman’s hire on June 16, 2010, Fulks said the move made sense.

“That’s what I remember thinking: ‘Wow, that makes sense,’” said Fulks, who remains connected to the program through its name, image and likeness collective. “He’s just a really calm and consistent leader. He kind of fits Maryland a little bit: a little nitty-gritty, get to work, don’t talk too much. Just make it happen.”

And quickly. Maryland advanced to the NCAA final in Tillman’s first season in College Park, the program’s first such trip since 1998, and returned in Year 2.

By then, both Yow and Lipitz were gone. In late June 2010, less than two weeks after Tillman’s hiring was finalized, Yow left Maryland for the same post at North Carolina State. A year later, Lipitz joined her in Raleigh as a deputy AD.

But Tillman’s dominance was only dawning. In 2015, Maryland won its first of three straight and six total Big Ten Conference regular-season titles. In 2017, after two more runner-up finishes in the NCAA tournament, the Terps won their first national title since 1975, beating Ohio State in Gillette Stadium.

Among the announced 28,971 in attendance that day was Fulks. His last game in a Maryland final had come in the 1995 NCAA final, a loss to Syracuse in College Park. As the clock ticked down on the Terps’ 9-6 win over the Buckeyes, Fulks remembered getting emotional.

“It was a big disappointment in my life,” Fulks said of his own championship game loss, “and it was really good to see those kids get it. That’s all I wanted to do when I played lacrosse, was win a national championship in college, and I fell short.”

That Maryland is headed for its fourth Final Four in five seasons — as many as Johns Hopkins, Virginia and the Orangemen have combined for over the same span — is “surreal,” Fulks said. That Tillman’s success has now spanned four athletic directors at Maryland, two shot clock eras in college lacrosse (before and after its implementation) and an ever-deepening culture of player empowerment is all the more remarkable.

Tillman joked Thursday that, when he was first hired at Maryland, he hoped he’d do well enough to avoid working at Chick-fil-A. Job security is no longer an issue. The only head coach in program history with a longer tenure is Dick Edell (18 seasons). The contract extension that Tillman signed two weeks ago would take him through Year 20.

He knows what the Terps are after. Not much has changed there since Year 1.

“They took a chance on me,” Tillman said as the Terps wrapped up their final practice in College Park. “I think it just means dig in, work harder, try to make sure that you get that opportunity, you earn the ability, to kind of stay a little bit longer. ... When someone does take a chance on you, you want to prove them right.”