Florida Warm Up 2025: Mega-Recap (Men’s)

Carleton CUT win the early season major in dominant fashion, and BYU CHI make a powerful undefeated statement.

February 6, 2025 by Edward Stephens in Recap

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Gainesville, FL – With perfect weather and exuberant ultimate front and center, the first men’s division major of the season delivered on everything it promised. Two teams, official tournament champions #6 Carleton CUT and annual Friday-Saturday warriors #17 BYU CHI, finished the weekend a perfect 8-0. Behind them, a host of teams offered glimpses of their championship ambitions, Nationals quality, and regional worth. There is a lot to cover, and we’ll spend the next 4,000 words doing just that. Buckle up.

Ferocious CUT Tame Zoo in Final

Carleton reign supreme in Florida for the third time in the event’s history after defeating #3 UMass Zoodisc in the final to cap off a perfect weekend. Put in historical context, the win bodes well for their chances later this spring. Their previous two Warm Up victories led to a national championship (2011) and a trip to semis (2018). The fact that they barrelled through the bracket and took down a UMass side who looked just as good as CUT did through the first seven games confirms what many around the division suspected (and, depending on the perspective, feared): Carleton are ready, right now, to compete for a title.

“We flipped a switch and decided to be present,” said CUT captain Daniel Chen. “It comes from our veterans showing where the floor needs to be, where the energy needs to be, and making the decision to lead the team.”

Carleton and UMass began the final with a confidence befitting two teams who had just fended off strong challengers (#11 Texas TUFF and #13 WashU Contra, respectively) by comfortable 13-9 margins in semis. Roan Dunkerley, Ethan Lieman, and Gavin Abrahamsson had little trouble finding open yardage for a Zoodisc hold; the same held true for CUT’s Daniel Chen, Ellis Newhouse, and Nobi Lorenz on the next point. These initial sequences highlighted one of the tournament’s undercurrents: downfield cutting is prominent again in a big way this year. (Zoo and CUT, who have elite-level cutting corps, are poised to profit all season long from this latest evolution of the division’s meta.)

Zoodisc earned the first break chance, but it was spoiled when a soft Taylor Hanson forehand reset carried well over Leo Narbonne’s head. Those kinds of unforced errors had caused trouble for UMass throughout the weekend, canceling several stifling defensive points. Another one – an poorly shaped huck by Nadav Berkman – set up a break for CUT. CUT’s D-line offense is aggressive, opportunistic, and remarkably fast. It was no surprise to see them win three consecutive footraces up the force sideline to take the early lead. Roughly two blinks of an eye (and a second visit from the UMass error bug) later, Carleton extended the lead to 4-2. Luca Harwood doinked an open pass, and Ryan duSaire quickly found Nate de Morgan at the back of the endzone on the counter.

A word on duSaire and de Morgan. Their energizing presence was a major factor for the CUT D-line’s (and, therefore, the whole team’s) success all weekend. You wouldn’t know that they were playing in their first sanctioned college tournament.¹ DuSaire’s downfield defense, thanks to his footwork and acceleration, is already top class: he limited Lieman (in this reporter’s opinion, the most effective cutter at the tournament) better than anyone else. Those same qualities come in handy once CUT get possession. De Morgan’s all-gas approach to offense, fortified with a nasty backhand and eagle’s-eye field vision, is devastating after a turnover. A third figure in the new-look defense, freshman Thomas Shope, did not play the final but impressed in earlier rounds.

Nothing perhaps speaks more highly of the Carleton offense than the fact that they finished the first half with only two turnovers against the tournament’s (until then) stingiest defense. With players like Nima Lhamo, Tobias Paperno, Calan Kirkpatrick, and rookie Mason Stone² all regularly getting hands on or near discs and with the loose, switchy scheme in full effect, Zoodisc attracted extra possessions like a flytrap – until the final. CUT’s cutters Chen, Lorenz, Newhouse, and Charlie Bitler consistently created big spaces on the field, and handlers Finn Fuhrmann and Declan Miller calmy fed them. Having established the upper hand on both sides of the disc, Carleton had two breaks and all of the game’s momentum at halftime.

Zoodisc dug in their heels early in the second half to regain some of the ground they had lost. Lieman denied duSaire twice in one-on-one coverage to spoil CUT break chances, Harwood flashed a high-release backhand to push the disc to the break side en route to a crucial hold, and McSweeney, crossing over from the offense, dotted the i’s in pinpoint with a crossfield hammer  for Zoodisc’s first break of the game. Thanks to retooled approach to the defense, they had reduced Carleton’s advantage to a single goal.

“It took adjusting to their game a little bit,” said McSweeney. “They got a lot of hucks on us [early]. We did best when we pushed them toward the disc and denied them the deep ball.”

A phenomenal layout poach block from Lhamo on the next point gave Zoodisc a chance to tie. But that’s as close as the game would get. Axel Olson, another CUT rookie, peeled away from the far side handler and jumped the reset lane for a layout poach block of his own to get it back. Already an accomplished throwing prospect before college, Olson is showing signs of expanding the rest of his game at a rapid pace.

A few traded holds later, a spot of bad luck for Zoodisc star Abrahamsson ended the game in CUT’s favor. Trailing 10-11, UMass crossed him over to the D-line to push Miller – CUT’s most consistently effective offensive performer and perhaps the best player at the tournament – out of the handler set and get a block. Miller indeed went deep, the away shot indeed went up, and Abrahamsson, one of the division’s premier overhead playmakers, indeed beat him to the disc and swatted it. The disc, however, popped up higher, giving Miller enough time to run onto it for the score before it hit turf. Misfortune would dog Abrahamsson on the next offensive point as well. He skied his defender to clean up a poor huck and had the catch in hand. But while he was descending from the jump, the momentum from the effort kept his arm swinging, and he accidentally let go of the disc, sending it five yards behind him to the ground. CUT wasted little time in punching in the break to win.

The promise of this iteration of CUT is real. The way they improved between Friday – when #20 Brown Brownian Motion gave them fits – and Sunday is an important measure of their resolve. “I think we grew a lot as a team,” said Chen. “We were pretty rough around the edges [on Friday] and we worked through some of that… We have a lot more to work through. Florida is about as close to a fall tournament as you get in the regular season, so we’re still hungry. We’ve still got a lot to prove.”

UMass will also take heart from their performance, despite stumbling in the final. “Our first game versus our last game. The way we looked in the first game [against Utah State] was a lot worse, frankly, energy-wise,” said McSweeney.

Their mistakes should be relatively easy to sort out. They already have a plan: “Do more breakmark [drill]. A lot of breakmark.”

So, with Carleton having taken round one of what is sure to be a season long battle between two of the division’s elites, we can say definitively that they have the higher ceiling, right? Actually, it’s not quite that simple.Here is where we add the crucial note: neither CUT nor Zoodisc were at full strength, so our first assessment of them, telling as it is, is based on incomplete information. Carleton’s Chen and Zoodisc’s Stone, both essential players, left mid-game with injuries. (Neither injury, according to my unprofessional perspective, appeared to be serious, fortunately.) Shope would have raised CUT’s defensive standard even higher and fortified their berserker-like counterattacks. UMass, though, were playing without Wyatt Kellmann. Kellmann has, when healthy, been, arguably, the best player in the division. He is in the midst of rehabbing the injuries that have hampered him in the past and plans to rejoin the team late in the season. Without him on the field, there is simply no reasonable way to judge Zoodisc’s ceiling or how they will stack up against Carleton at Nationals.

That’s the future, though, and no one knows how it will play out. For the present, one thing is abundantly clear: CUT rules.

The Return of BYU

If you watched CHI for any length of time last season, you would have been shocked to see the once-dominant program look relatively listless and discombobulated. It was almost unbelievable to see them go 2-11 on the season against teams who ended up in the end-of-season top 25. It’s safe to say that whatever issues afflicted them last season have burned away like a morning fog. BYU CHI 2025 are big, fast, focused, and relentless. They finished the weekend 8-0, including key wins over #13 WashU Contra, #6 Pittsburgh En Sabah Nur, and #8 Vermont Chill. Their closest game was a 13-10 Saturday victory over WashU; no one else played within five goals of them.

Whether they would have had similar success against either of the finalists remains an open question – their grueling eight-game match play schedule this year did not include UMass or Carleton, and they do not participate in the bracket because the school does not allow athletic organizations to play on Sundays – but the eye test says they would have matched up well with both of them.

BYU play to their strengths. They throw deep well, they cut deep well, they defend deep well, and they regularly turn what should be 50-50 discs to their favor. It starts with Chad Yorgason. Yorgason, for years one of college ultimate’s most impactful defenders, has now become one of its most complete players. To see him guide the offense (either on the O-line or, more often, quarterbacking the D-line after they get a turn) you could easily mistake him for his older brother Luke, who led CHI to their first 8-0 Warm Up tour in 2023. He breaks the mark without breaking a sweat, offers easy resets, and sets up his downfield cutters for success.

And, of course, Yorgason also launches massive hucks for his army of deep targets. BYU excel at the field position game. Simon Dastrup, Jensen Wells, Zach Burnside, and Curtis Watkins were four of the most athletic receivers at the tournament. Dastrup and Wells might have been the two most explosive players at the tournament (although #14 Georgia Jojah’s Jack Krugler should be mentioned alongside them). The constant threat of their deep game gives breathing room to Evan Miller, McKay Yorgason, and Justin Mecham (among others) to find plenty of openings closer to the disc. It’s the perfect ultimate example of a baseball concept: use your best fastball often, and it will make it easier and more effective when you mix in offspeed stuff.

Defensively, CHI are at their best using a containment-style zone. They run an amorphous foursome up front that allows plenty of lateral movement but astoundingly few opportunities for downfield looks of more than two or three yards. It becomes suffocating once the opposition reaches the attacking brick. Anchoring it all is Dastrup in the deep space. One of the rangiest defenders in the division, he baits turnovers or deters throws, depending on the risk tolerance of the offense.

All of it amounts to what is once again one of the best teams in the country. Let me step outside of the boundaries of a recap for a moment to offer an opinion on the larger picture: College Nationals has an asterisk on it every year that no effort is made by USAU to accommodate BYU CHI, when they are good. It was true from 2018 through 2023, and, now that the 2024 dip has proven to be short-lived, it is true again in 2025. This team should be playing alongside the other best teams in the country come Memorial Day Weekend.

South Central Semis Jamboree

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1. De Morgan is a rookie and duSaire, a sophomore, was injured for the 2024 spring season. ↩

2. Stone was injured early in the first half of the final. ↩