An extensive recap of the instant classic that sent Colorado to the semis and kept UNC from them for the first time in 10 years.
May 26, 2025 by Edward Stephens in Recap
BURLINGTON, WA – #1 Colorado Mamabird and #2 UNC Darkside met on Sunday morning and played the game of the tournament. The weather was calm, the throws were bold, the bids were enormous, the passion was palpable, and the intensity did not let up from the first pull to the final, nuclear Zeke Thoreson score. Mamabird broke on universe point to earn the 15-14 win, advancing to semis to take on #4 Oregon Ego.
It was a matchup that felt like an inevitability to the players on the field. “This [Darkside] team… it was our third game that went to universe with them this year,” said Colorado captain Ryan Shigley. “Two fantastic teams. It was going to come down to effort. They’re super-well coached, we’re super-well coached. They got dogs, we got dogs.”
“We knew that we were going to play Colorado. A lot of us had been visualizing it,” said UNC’s Ben Dameron. “They had all the expectation on them – they were one of the one-seeds, they won the pool, they won Easterns. They were the ones with the momentum… Ball was in their court.”
The defensive pressure from both sides throughout the game could have squeezed logs into tissue paper. Each team turned to less-heralded players to guard the other’s stars: Sam Redinbo owned the Tobias Brooks assignment for Darkside, and Mamabird’s Sam Kilgore volunteered to do what he could to limit Ben Dameron.
“In my Sockeye groupchat they were watching our game at Easterns,” said Colorado captain Ryan Shigley. “I think Trent [Dillon] said it well. He said ‘Bandana boy givin Dameron that work.’”
Two deep stables of defenders made for constantly refreshable legs to run dozens of 25-yd sprints with the other O-line thoroughbreds. The upshot was a need for the offenses to hurry through decisions faster than usual, work the disc through secondary and tertiary options, and fight hard for an extraordinarily high number of contested catches.
That combination of factors force a turn out of UNC on their first possession. Josh Singleton, seeing a small window to get an away shot off to Matt Barcellos, put a little too much fade on an inside-out forehand; Elliot Hawkins, Colorado’s do-everything rookie, arrived on the scene to coax an early jump out of Barcellos. On the counter, Kilgore made a head-turning grab near the back line to bring in a Hawkins blade.
Just like that, Colorado took a 2-0 lead.
Darkside settled in after that, largely thanks to super senior Kevin Pignone setting their course to his north star. Pignone had a brilliant game. He threw forehands with laboratory precision; he found weak spots in Colorado’s backfield defense with the viciousness of a highbrow film critic reviewing the latest non-load bearing Marvel Cinematic Universe project; most importantly, he kept everything moving, which kept the defense on their heels.
“Kevin was dicing the mark and was unstoppably open,” said Dameron.
Pignone finished with five assists, and one sensational goal.
UNC had broken to even the score at 2-2 after Redinbo’s footsteps startled Brooks into dropping a pass on an under cut. But they would fall behind again when Singleton fell victim to a swiftly closing window on a red zone shot. He hurried the throw to try to thread it, but it only touched grass.
“Our D-line had a great game plan,” said Shigley. “It took a few possessions to execute it the way we wanted to, but when we did it was just constant pressure.”
Hawkins tapped the disc in on the goal line and stepped into a 68-yd forehand. Axel Hartzog, pedaling an invisible midair bicycle, carried it the final two yards to give Colorado a 5-3 lead.
The Colorado advantage held steady at one break thanks to the hydra-headed O-line. The threat kept changing. It’s as if Brooks (4A), Nanda Min-Fink (1G/3A), Zeke Thoreson (4G), Tucker Kalmus (1G/4A), Levi Tapper (3G/1A), and Ryan Shigley (4G/1A) were passing a cape back and forth between each other throughout the game.
“Our seven on O are just an untouchable group,” said Shigley.
Then he remembered and reconsidered. “Well obviously we got touched a little there.”
However well an O-line play, one break is striking distance: anyone can make a mistake. And, leading 9-8, Brooks made two, a drop on a wide open pass and a short huck. While neither was a direct result of Redinbo’s coverage the way the first one was, the fact that Redinbo kept Brooks from finding his groove surely had an effect.
“[Redinbo]’s guarding their best player and giving him fits,” said Dameron. “Tobi was clearly uncomfortable the whole game. I don’t think he played as well as he likes to play because Sam was in his shorts.”
It was another defender, however, who made the biggest play of the point. Barcellos, crossing over often from the O-line, left his assignment in the end zone at just the right moment to lunge for a block on a sure scoring pass to Brooks. Daniel Zhang made it count by sneaking a 1-yd pass to Eli Fried on the other end. That Darkside break tied the game.
Mamabird stabilized, barely, on the next point. It took a layout at the absolute limit of effort from Shigley, with Thomas Harley closing on the play, to make the hold. It was yet another — of perhaps 20 combined between the teams? — play that illustrated the cornered-animal intensity both sides brought to the game.
“I think we gave everything that game,” said Shigley.
“That’s why you play,” said Dameron. “My mouth was dry as the Sahara. I crossed over many points, and I knew on that line that I was going to run as hard as I could because I owed it to my teammates. If they’re going to put me out there and trust me… I’m going to run until I can’t run anymore.”
Dameron, like Pignone, was a reliable driving force for Darkside’s offense, as he has been for years. Most of the time in the quarter that meant churning through cuts while trying to shake the pesky Kilgore and spotting pillowy forehands around the mark. But late in the second half he delivered the throw of the game, a scorching OI backhand to Grayson Trowbridge perfectly in stride and well out of reach of any Mamabird defenders. He finished the game with a Dameron-like 1G/5A/2D/0T line.
Darkside had not led all game. But on the defensive side, they weren’t done. The game was knotted at 13-13, and Colorado’s O-line had come off of a couple of shaky second half points. Harley read an OIIO lane and jumped all over a Brooks blade before it could get near its destination, Min-Fink. Dameron gathered the disc on the goal line and shoveled a backhand through Mamabird’s poachy set to Barcellos to give UNC the pivotal break. They would have two chances to win.
The first chance passed quickly as Colorado marched down the open side for a clean hold. Darkside received on universe with the confidence of knowing they had played a tighter second half on offense. Shigley made a furious first throw bid, coming up just short but making it clear that nothing would come easily. Mamabird were locked in on every cut, yielding minimal yardage and putting themselves in position to make a play on any throw that was so much as an inch off course.
Despite playing against an opponent with a difficulty setting pinned to ‘expert,’ UNC worked it up to the red zone, and Dameron nearly underbaked a throw he had been making perfectly all game: the touch around forehand. If Barcellos hadn’t skidded to his knees to dig it out, the possession would have ended there. Barcellos stood up and, after surveying the backhand options for a couple of counts, stepped low to throw the same kind of around flick that Dameron had thrown him. This one also started to knife toward the ground, and the receiver Seth Fried also skidded to his knees to pick it up. But it was too low, or Fried was too late, and the throw just hit the turf before he could control it.
Colorado had the disc, but they still had to contend with a Darkside defense that refused to give anything. They advanced 10 yards, and UNC drove them back. Finally, Tucker Kalmus spotted Zeke Thoreson starting to run away from the disc, and with a moment before the mark could set, he powered up the forehand of his life.
And then Thoreson made the play of his career, and probably the play of the tournament:
The catch sent the packed sidelines into hysterics, advanced Colorado to semifinals, and closed the book on the most incredible streak the men’s division has ever known: the 10 consecutive appearances in the semifinals at Nationals.
It also meant the end of the college career of Ben Dameron, one of the sport’s greats. He was philosophical and appreciative about the end of his time on Darkside.
“Darkside is easily the most important group of people I’ve ever been a part of,” he said. “Taught me how to be a man. How to feel connection with other people. How to foster a community that cares about each other, that buys into each other, that relies on each other, that trusts each other.”
“I know other teams won, but we’re the real winners because of the culture that we get to be a part of. It lasts beyond. I talked to [former Darkside player] Liam [Searles-Bohs] after the game. It hurts so much because I thought to myself, ‘I’ll never get to wear that jersey again.’ And then he said, ‘It just changes. The love never dies.’ And that really resonated with me. I’m ready to move on to that next stage of loving the iterations of the team that will follow. I love this team with everything in my being, and it is in no small part due to every single person who donned that black jersey.
For Colorado, however, it isn’t an end so much as potentially the next step is something great. They have had their eye on a championship since last season’s disappointing semifinal loss to Brown.
After a monumental win in a monumental game over the program that has been the nearest thing to a monument that the college division has ever seen, Mamabird are within sight of their goal.
