At 6 p.m. Wednesday, the 55-word statement on the Yale women’s soccer website relayed the news that Brendan Faherty was no longer the head coach of the team. With no details or context, the school announced Faherty was gone.

Five hours, 24 minutes later, many details and more context appeared on the website of the Yale Daily News. The digital home to the country’s oldest college daily newspaper offered a comprehensive and well-sourced 2,417-word investigative piece that provided all of the answers to the questions sparked by Yale’s statement.

The Daily News reported Faherty had “a history of abusing his position” as head coach at the University of New Haven between 2003 and 2009. The News interviewed seven women who played for Faherty at UNH in reporting details of an alleged “consensual, intimate physical relationship” between Faherty and a player and of an incident when Faherty allegedly groped a players breasts after demanding she sleep in his bed.

The story, written by staff reporter Mackenzie Hawkins, includes background of how the reporting seemingly led to the abrupt departure of Faherty.

The News brought the allegations to Yale on Monday, “following an independent investigation.”

“On Wednesday, Vice President for Communications Nate Nickerson told the News that Faherty is no longer a Yale employee,” Hawkins wrote.

This is the latest scoop for a student-news operation known for breaking stories. The Daily News, founded in 1878, has sent a stream of journalists to the highest perches in the profession — from The Washington Post to The New York Times to The Wall Street Journal to the New Yorker and many more spots.

The paper is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, along with supplements and special issues devoted to events such as this week’s Yale-Harvard football game.

But the Wednesday night news drop is the most significant work of the week. The story is painstakingly detailed in citing its unnamed source who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to “fear of retribution, community ties and privacy concerns.”

Hawkins relies on the sources as she offers vivid details of Faherty’s alleged behavior — including drinking with players at bars.

The News reports that in January 2009 Faherty and three players attended a concert in New York City. Faherty drove the players back to Connecticut, but one player told the News that he was “clearly too drunk to be driving.”

The recollection of the drive home is confirmed with the two other players, as well as a third player who heard the story later. Later, according to the story, Faherty took a player to his home and demanded she sleep in his bed. She told the News Faherty groped her under her shirt.

The News spoke to the player’s roommate along with her then-boyfriend and another former player, all of whom said the woman told them a version of the story.

On four occasions in the story, Hawkins writes that Faherty did not respond to multiple requests for a comment.

Another former UNH player told the News that she was “intimately involved with Faherty for a number of years … and had sexual encounters while she was still a player on his team and for several years after her graduation.”

That account was corroborated by “players and individuals in whom [the player] confided at the time, as well as with messages exchanged after she left UNH.”

The deep and detailed reporting not only resonated at Yale, but it led UNH to issue a statement Thursday night. School president Dr. Steven H. Kaplan said the university is hiring an independent firm to investigate the allegations.

paul.doyle@hearstmediact.com; @pauldoyle1