UNC come away with a universe win against UMass in a potential late-stages-of-Nationals preview. Plus, notes on the highs and lows of the rest of the field.
March 7, 2025 by Edward Stephens in Recap
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Knoxville, TN – In an instant classic of a final, #4 UNC Darkside defeated #5 Massachusetts Zoodisc 15-14, breaking to close out a tight, tense universe point and win the 2025 Smoky Mountain Invite title. Darkside’s undefeated run through the tournament’s top tier competition puts their season record at 17-1, exactly where a team determined to make their 11th consecutive semis appearance at Nationals should be at this point of the season. And, despite the no doubt formidable challenge to come from several other programs, at this point Darkside are the favorites to take the 2025 title.
Darkside Prevail in Titanic Final
From the first pull, the SMI final had the feel of a Nationals elimination game.
“There was a different type of energy, clearly,” said Zoodisc player Ethan Lieman. “We all knew that every point mattered. Everyone on the field and off the field was giving it their all.”
Both defenses came out on the junky side of matchup. The objective was clear: to smoke out a pull play look without giving it any sort of space to do damage, while letting any potential turnovers come to them from offensive mistakes. Check, and check. Zoodisc, who had made a habit of scoring quickly on offense several times per game, were forced to work it around the field at more or less horizontal angles – including an excellent hammer from handler Caelan McSweeney, who has added that throw to his regular repertoire in a big way this season – until finding an open short pass for the goal. Darkside scored on their second pass, a long continue down the line from Josh Singleton (one of his game-high five assists), of standstill offense as they immediately found the open spaces around the edge of Zoodisc’s gummy look. Game on.
UNC would crack first. A pair of unsuccessful huck attempts, both unforced errors, gave the UMass D-line a chance, and Leo Narbonne and Artie Aucoin expertly led them into scoring range before finding frequent O-line crossover Gavin Abrahamsson at the near cone. Credit to Darkside for refusing to buckle under intense, straight matchup pressure on the next point. With Grayson Trowbridge stymied by Tomo Liou, Kevin Pignone under strict surveillance from Calan Kirkpatrick, and Singleton getting UMass rookie Mason Stone’s best one-on-one, progress was not easy, but Pignone evened the game by getting the goal within arm’s reach of three UMass defenders. Pignone’s toughness in tight spaces (often, all that Zoodisc would allow) throughout the final cannot be overstated.
Zoodisc kept their advantage through the half. Even at 7-6, when the Darkside defense had them absolutely stuck – Singleton, Pignone, Thomas Harley, Seth Fried, Trowbridge, and Keller Fraley had every sensible option under lock and key – and Jake Schwartz (easily one of the top three defenders at the tournament) batted away a bailout Carter Hawkins look, it worked out. Ethan Schiff, who has a reputation with UMass for his magnetic hands, came flying from the other side of the goal box to clean up the trash.
Thanks to their hustle plays and defensive intensity, UMass enjoyed an 8-6 lead at the break.
“We, this season, unfortunately have players who are so injured that they’re not even here at the tournament,” said Lieman. “We have those players in the back of our minds, thinking about how fortunate we are to be in this position to play and thinking about how they would have done everything they could to be in the moment. So we’re giving it everything we can on the field.”
But the UNC clapback was inevitable.
“This group has shown a lot of resiliency,” said Singleton. “We were down 7-5 to Oregon [on Saturday]. We were down to Colorado [in semis].”
“We’ve been pushing really hard at practice knowing moments like this are going to come,” he continued. “We have a lot of new faces on the team this year, and that helps us push really hard. The sort of ‘status quo’ of years past feels a little bit removed, and that has helped us work hard in those moments.”
A Zoodisc throw into the center of the field was a degree too hot for Roan Dunkerley – one of Zoodisc’s two rookies, along with Stone, to take regular feature roles – to corral, and Darkside’s D-line were swift to slot the disc to the front cone. The break tied the game at 9s.
The next break came quickly on its heels. Singleton took advantage of a UMass miscommunication to fire a forehand over Zoodisc’s transition defense to Schwartz, a one-throw score to flip the game’s momentum. Singleton’s rise this spring from supremely talented gear in the Darkside machine – as he has been since his rookie debut in the 2021-22 double-Nationals season – to true rock has been brilliant to witness. In the past, he could get a touch wild. In 2025, however, he’s calmer and more focused with all of his shots, and he knows how to regulate his intensity to meet the moment. The rest of the team have learned to turn to him as the example on both sides of the disc. As a result, he has entered the Player of the Year conversation in a serious way.
UMass would need to find another break if they wanted to have a chance. Fortunately, their army of defenders always seem ready to give them a chance. Liou jumped the lane for a catch-block and showed incredible patience a few throws into the counter, letting Trowbridge leap early and waiting for a popped throw to settle into his arms. That goal gave Zoodisc a 14-13 lead.
They would not be able to close it out. One of the strengths of Zoodisc over the past few years has been the undeniable game-ready talent of their rookies. For the latest two entries into that illustrious ledger, Stone and Dunkerley, it was a trial by fire in crunch time of the biggest game of their young careers.
“They are phenomenal,” said Lieman. “Playing on this O-line, even though it’s just their rookie year, [they’re] already clicking. They’ve already made their imprint for sure.”
As phenomenal as they had been up until that point, it did not quite pan out that way in the closing moments of the final. Stone could not contain UNC’s Matt Barcellos – a sixth-year transfer from UCLA who has been one of the keys to their success – at the front cone, surrendering a Darkside hold to tie the game at 14s. Then, on universe point, Dunkerley doinked an open pass to give up a first possession, and Stone whiffed when reaching out to snag what would have been the game winner. The lights were a little too bright for them in their first major exposure – no, Florida Warm Up does not provide the same kind of intensity – and the SMI final will have to serve as a dress rehearsal1 for what appears to be a team headed straight for even bigger moments come Memorial Day Weekend.
You can’t say the same about Darkside. Their players were born and bred in the limelight, and knowing how to conduct themselves at the skinny end of close, important games is the birthright that comes with being one of the most consistently successful programs in college ultimate history. The third time of asking – after Schiff couldn’t quite get hold of a high Hawkins OIIO pass – UNC finished off the game. Singleton read the field before his defender, Dunkerley, as the disc moved, sped toward the near cone, and laid out to secure the game winner.
Darkside exuded confidence during the win. The hard work their players (and industrial-sized fleet of coaches) have put in over, in many cases, several years was apparent in the readiness of their entire roster to push in the same direction. Max Goetz, Thomas Harley, and Aaron Wei (to name a few) were as vital to the defense’s success as the more celebrated Trowbridge and Schwartz. The regular excellence of Watkins Parker, Jason Manning, and AJ Fiordalisi on the O-line was undimmed by their proximity to the whitehot Singleton and Barcellos.
“We’re very lucky to have that kind of depth,” said Singleton.
Collectively UNC will be, at a bare minimum, as prepared as any team in the country for a run at the championship.
Despite the hiccups at the end that cost them the game, though, Zoodisc are tantalizingly close to that standard. Their first-year duo, final point notwithstanding, match up well against any starters in the country, up to and including anyone on Darkside. Hawkins (4A, 2G in the final) and McSweeney have leveled up to a preposterous extent since a year ago to make a strong backfield even more dynamic. Gavin Abrahamsson – check out his universe point layout block against UNC – and Ethan Lieman have both been two-way all-stars for the entire season. Luca Harwood weighs hucks to the 17th significant figure before rounding. The defense runs a dozen beasts deep even without the periodic Abrahamsson/Lieman/Stone/McSweeney crossovers. They’re going to be right there in the conversation with UNC or anybody else in the latter stages of Nationals.
“UMass is a really good team. Always brings the energy, always brings the effort,” said Singleton. “Especially defensively. They worked really, really hard to try to stop us.”
And yet for all 29 points of hard-hitting, often brilliant ultimate, one comes away from the SMI final with a sense of incompleteness. How will this pair stack up against each other with a full complement of players? Ben Dameron (UNC, World Games tryout) and Wyatt Kellman (UMass, injury recovery) are possibly the two least containable players in the division; neither of them played this weekend. Lieman and Darkside star Eli Fried left the final in the first half and did not return. Do the scales tip one way or the other with all of those players involved?
Or, more to the point, if these teams play at full strength, does the rest of the division have a chance?
Bird Rising
Just two weeks after their somewhat underwhelming debut, #8 Colorado Mamabird have made enormous strides.
Not in terms of actual dress, by the way, because Zoodisc did not wear uniforms in the final. ↩
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