After the 10 minutes of high fiving his teammates and more “Let’s go” exaltations than he could count, Cole Kirst stepped away to make a few phone calls.

Just past 9:10 p.m. on Sunday, he dialed up his brother, Connor.

The NCAA Selection Show had revealed that Cole Kirst’s Lehigh Mountain Hawks would play his brother’s Rutgers Scarlet Knights in the first round. His roommates celebrated in his off-campus home, while Connor and Cole Kirst watched the bracket reveal from the Rodkin Center on the Rutgers campus.

“Are you kidding me?!” Cole said to his brother, who by then was working on a paper due at midnight. “Let’s go. Let’s go. You’re going down.”

“Alright Cole, can I call you back?” Connor said, laughing. “I have to finish this paper, but this is so sick.”

Cole Kirst wasn’t done. He called his brother, Colin, the starting goalie at Rutgers who had transferred from Lehigh last offseason. Colin Kirst was still celebrating with his team, but he made sure to pick up.

“This is the stuff you dream about,” Colin Kirst told his brother before some of his former teammates sprinkled in some smack talk from the background.

“Stick side high! Stick side high!”

“I’m taking it down low. I got you!”

Sunday night was full of excitement for the Kirst brothers, with Cole Kirst and Lehigh earning a seed in the tournament field and Connor and Colin Kirst hearing Rutgers’ name called for the first time since 2004. But as the dust settled on the bracket reveal, each was left thinking of his brothers and a full household in Bernardsville, N.J.

Even their mother, Michelle Kirst, couldn’t ignore the significance of the game between Rutgers and Lehigh this weekend.

“I was stunned and surprised, and I tried to do a quick FaceTime, but I couldn’t hear anything because they were all screaming and yelling,” Michelle Kirst said. “It was so exciting, but then it sunk in and it was like, ‘Uh oh.’”

When Lehigh meets Rutgers at Klöckner Stadium in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday, the moment not only represents the first time Connor, Colin and Cole Kirst had taken the same field, but it serves as a full-circle moment for those that knew their late father, Kyle.

Kyle Kirst, who was an integral part of the Scarlet Knights’ 1990 NCAA tournament team, died suddenly on June 16, 2015 — leaving behind his five boys, all of whom had aspirations of college lacrosse. He was on Colin Kirst’s mind when he chose to transfer to Rutgers last offseason, and he was present when Connor Kirst made the same decision just a few days later.

Now, almost six years after Kyle Kirst’s passing, three of his sons will take the field in an NCAA tournament, and the Kirst family is guaranteed to advance to the NCAA quarterfinals.

“I can hear him,” Michelle Kirst said. “He’s beaming with pride. He would have cried. It would have been a very emotional moment for him. The boys just have made us so, so proud and they share in everything together. That’s all Kyle cared about — giving your best and it doesn’t matter what jersey you’re wearing.”

The matchup comes after a series of offseason decisions, the product of more than a few backyard bonfires at the Kirst home in New Jersey. During the quarantine of 2020, four of the five Kirst boys — Connor, Cole, Caden and C.J. — finished shooting on Colin and hung out by the fire talking about their shared passion, lacrosse.

There were no s’mores, but plenty of good times.

“No s’mores really,” Colin Kirst joked. “Connor is more of a weiner dog guy.”

“We were all just hanging out for a couple hours and you’re not on your phone, just listening to music,” Connor Kirst said. “It was good stuff.”

For Colin Kirst, the main subject of his fireside chats was his impending fifth-year transfer from Lehigh. He was looking for a new challenge in his final season of college lacrosse, and he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps at Rutgers.

Connor Kirst had already committed to Villanova for his fifth year, but it only took a few days for him to consider joining his brother. During another backyard bonfire, he spoke his transfer to Rutgers into existence.

“Connor was just around the fire saying, ‘Maybe I should make this work, too.’” Cole remembered. “Then, the next couple of days it just happened. It happened really fast.”

Cole Kirst had only completed two seasons at Lehigh, so he was never tempted to leave his surroundings. He settled on being as big a Rutgers lacrosse fan as a Lehigh lacrosse player could possibly be.

Throughout the 2021 season, the Kirst brothers made time to watch each other — whether that meant rushing home to watch live or tuning in to the recording after a game or practice. The connection between the three brothers fostered a friendly relationship between two teams that last played in 2019.

Connor and Cole Kirst made their Rutgers debut on Feb. 20 against Penn State, a game in which the former tallied seven points and the latter made 15 saves. With seconds left in the third quarter, Colin Kirst made a save on a Dylan Foulds shot and flipped the ball to Jaryd Jean-Felix, who then tossed it up field to Connor Kirst, who scored on a 15-yard blast.

Some 60 miles west, Cole Kirst and his Lehigh teammates watched on the edge of their seats. They were watching the Big Ten Network broadcast and had been screaming all game, but when Colin Kirst made that save, the noise hit its peak.

“Colin made the save and then outlet to Connor, we were all high fiving and we got up out of our seats and we were going nuts,” Cole Kirst said. “That was one of the coolest moments all year, from us just watching the game and then seeing that happen. That was awesome. We were like, ‘Yeah! Let’s go.’”

Connor and Colin Kirst returned the favor throughout the season, calling their brother as they re-watched games and caught up with his roommates. Cole Kirst even made the trip to Bethlehem, Pa., to watch his brother player Lafayette on April 18 — a Sunday off day for Rutgers.

“We watch every game,” Connor Kirst said. “Even just through visiting them last year, I’ve gotten to know their whole team, too. They’ve been huge Rutgers supporters all season, and now we’re playing them. It’s crazy.”

As hard as it has been for the Kirst brothers to catch each other’s games, the task is twice as difficult for Michelle Kirst. She and a number of her husband’s former teammates have tuned into each Lehigh and Rutgers game this season — some even converted garages into makeshift “pubs.”

For Michelle Kirst, watching a Rutgers men’s lacrosse game this season has been a crash course in focus. With Colin Kirst protecting the cage and Connor Kirst running in the midfield, she has no time for breaks.

“This is truly another level,” she said. “There’s no downtime. I can’t walk away. It’s offense or defense. It’s nailbiting. It’s stressful. It’s up and down. But it’s an honor to have both of them on the field together.”

Now she’ll get the chance to see three of her sons on the same lacrosse field in a pivotal NCAA tournament game at one of the sport’s most historic venues, Klöckner Stadium.

How will she manage?

“I’m trying to find someone that I could hire to get some blimp time,” she joked. “I will sit up and just hover over the stadium. I’m happy to navigate the blimp overhead. I used to joke all the time that I would love to have a little treehouse at one of the fields, and I can just sit there and watch the game. Now, I’m elevating. I want a blimp.”

Unfortunately, she’ll have to settle for the stands in Charlottesville on Saturday. She’ll have plenty of other choices to make before this weekend, like what to wear to appease both sides of the matchup.

Through her sons’ high school careers, where Connor Kirst played at Delbarton, Colin and Cole Kirst at Seton Hall Prep and Kyle Kirst coaching at Summit, Michelle Kirst wore red and white.

“I was Switzerland,” Michelle Kirst joked about the origin of her outfit.

Now, though, red and white won’t work — those are the primary colors of Rutgers men’s lacrosse. She’s currently considering other options on the color palette.

“A friend said that they’re working on putting together two jerseys for me,” she said. “I could go with the Summit Hilltoppers, where this really all started. I could wear the maroon and gold.”

There’s plenty for Michelle Kirst to think about in the lead-up to the matchup between Rutgers and Lehigh, including what she’ll be making for the family supper — a tradition dating back to when the brothers faced off in high school. In past dinners, Kyle and his sons engaged in smack talk while eating some type of “hefty” beef mixed with some broccoli.

Now that three of his sons are off at college, the suppers have gone virtual, but Michelle Kirst will make sure the tradition stands. The Kirst family will FaceTime into the family dinner on Thursday night, two days before the biggest game of their lives.

It’s just as their father would have dreamed. 

“He would have been on top of the world,” Connor Kirst said.