Carleton CUT are the 2025 D-I Men’s Champions.
May 28, 2025 by Alex Rubin in Recap
Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2025 college ultimate season is presented by Spin Ultimate; all opinions are those of the author(s). Find out how Spin can get you, and your team, looking your best this season.
BURLINGTON, WA – It was a storybook ending for #5 Carleton CUT. Under the shadow of the snow-capped Cascades and in front of a raucous crowd, CUT outplayed #1 Colorado Mamabird and will end the 2025 season as deserved champions. This is CUT’s fifth D-I title, tying them with North Carolina Darkside for second place all time.1
From start to finish, this year’s CUT team was clearly the deepest, most polished, and most tenacious in the division. While a lot of the focus is (rightly) on the stellar rookie class, CUT’s seniors have been through so much to make it to this game and win a title in their final season. “It’s been a lot of waiting for this class,” senior captain Cullen Baker said. “Waiting to go to Nationals, and then waiting to play with Declan [Miller], and then at this tournament waiting in the hotel room to play in this game. It definitely means a lot for this class. It’s pretty sick. We’ve been working hard for four years with our eyes on this, and it feels really good to finally do it.”
In 2021, they were not able to complete pool play at Nationals as a COVID outbreak took the team out of the tournament. In 2022, CUT were upset at North Central Regionals and did not even make Nationals. In 2023, Miller suffered a season ending knee injury and the team needed to rebuild their offense on the fly ahead of Nationals; their performance was gritty and admirable, but led to an early bracket exit. In 2024 CUT shockingly went 0-4 in pool play.
Coming into 2025, this team had yet to live up their promise and potential that had been built up over the years. Baker, Daniel Chen, Leo Xiao, Will Troop, George Lefkowitz, and Bobby Eleveld wanted to add another championship banner in the Carleton gym, and they all made sacrifices in order to do it. With a large and talented incoming rookie class, each older player took a step back in some way in order to let the rookie class shine.
“Our motto all year was strength in numbers,” Baker said. “So we’ve been bought into it from day one. I always say that a team is made up of the leaders without titles. Leo Xiao comes to mind as one of those senior leaders. Before Regionals he took all of those guys who weren’t playing a lot and had a meeting with them. He just got all those D2 guys really bought in to playing so the starters could rest. It happened in the WashU game. We rested 12 guys, and we won. It’s because we’re the deepest team in the country and everyone bought into the depth and it’s been sick all year.”
While other teams might have just played out the string, the cleatless players and coaching staff were louder on the sideline than they were in the bracket games, willing their teammates to victory. CUT were able to pull out a universe point win over WashU without playing Miller, Daniel Chen, Axel Olson, Nate De Morgan, and several others.
“We go one through 32,” CUT coach Timothy Schoch said. “They understand that we’re fielding – especially at this tournament – the lines we need to win. We went to universe point with UNC. We only won by two against Cal Poly and three in this game. They understood that and they bought in, which is a testament to their character. Those guys understood that as the D2 unit, they took an O-line2 mentality that we get our jerseys dirty to keep our quarterback’s clean, and if we can do that work that means that the top of the roster can succeed in the pressure moments. We talked about that so much that we were winning as a team at this tournament.”
“In the WashU game, that was the happiest I was all tournament,” Schoch continued. “I cried so hard after that game because I was so proud of them. It showed that we can play with anyone through our full roster. They bought in. It’s incredibly mature, it’s not the easiest thing to do, especially as a senior, but it’s their maturity, their character, and their desire to field a great team.”
And while the whole team contributed to a well deserved title, CUT were led in large part by an incredible rookie class. Axel Olson (1G/2A) and Nate De Morgan (3G/3A) connected on CUT’s first goal of the final. De Morgan launched his trademark backhand huck to Thomas Shope to close out the game. Ellis Newhouse and Charlie Bitler each filled key downfield roles on offense, and Bitler also got a lot of playing time on defense at Nationals.
It can be really difficult for first year players to acclimate to the physicality of the college division and the longer tournament days compared to youth competition – not to mention the off-field adjustments of life away from home for the first time. CUT were not only able to fit in their rookies, but to truly let them shine as they carried the team farther than any single class before them could.
“CUT has an amazing tradition and an amazing alumni network, De Morgan said. “The seniors and upperclassmen on the team have been unbelievably accepting and helpful, welcoming us all in.”
All of CUT’s planning and preperation were put to the test against Colorado on Monday morning. After a weekend of ultimate played in sunny weather with little wind, the final featured a bit of misty rain at the start, swirling winds, and a strange cold that seemed to upset the normal order of play. Up to this point, CUT played as close to clean ultimate as can be reasonably expected in the college game. For comparison, CUT threw three turnovers in their quarterfinal win and four in the semifinal. In Monday’s final, the team is credited with 16, many of them in the first few points. Nervy drops and overthrows in the wind made for an entertaining, back and forth affair, but CUT were better built to withstand the different conditions than Mamabird.
“We knew it would be a physical, aggressive game,” De Morgan said. “They’re a really good team. They’re big, they’re fast. We knew the turnovers would come, but we knew before the game so we could adjust before the game. When the turnovers came we were prepared and we played good defense on a turn.”
“I think it affected both teams low key,” Zeke Thoreson said. “One thing they did really well that helped stop our momentum was that they were really good about flashing the lane with their defenders on somebody on our team who was kind of out of the way. They did a really good job blocking these open side shots and giving us more pressure having to work the ball a little bit more.”
Colorado attempted 59 more throws than CUT, as Mamabird were forced to reset the disc over and over again while Carleton had more success attacking vertically downfield. “We’re from the North Central,” De Morgan added. “We live in the wind and the rain and the cold, so we’ve played in way worse than this before, so we were ready for when it happened. We like that weather. It benefits us as a team, so we loved it.”
Mamabird went down early but never gave up. With two second half breaks, Colorado proved they could legitimately compete against the best team in the division, and never gave up hope. “This whole season, I’ve had this feeling that there’s so much trust, and love, and respect for my teammates,” Zeke Thoreson said. “That’s the thing that’s going to stick. Throughout the whole thing. I still believe we can win–that never faded until the last moment.”
Thoreson delivered one of the best performances Colorado could have asked for despite the losing effort. Thoreson took on the hardest matchups CUT had to offer and won more often than he lost, highlighted by an early layout block on what looked like a sure throw to Miller — one of his game-leading four.
“Our coach Jonathan Nethercutt was telling us in the circle that what we need to do on defense is just to dog your man,” Thoreson said. “So I took that to heart.”
Aside from the aforementioned layout blocks, CUT largely dealt with Colorado’s defensive pressure well. Olson in particular was a wizard in the backfield, dancing around defenders who were trying to body him out of the positive reset space and placing throws just where the defense could not get to them. On one particularly tense first half point, Mamabird aggressively trapped Olson on the right sideline. With his mark angled almost behind him to stop the around backhand and defenders fronting their matchups through the open side lane, Olson crafted a cross-field, inside-out dart to Miller that not only kept possession alive, but set up the CUT offense to then score quickly on the break side.
For every title-winning team there are a handful of championship-winning plays beyond the obvious skies and scores, and Olson’s throw there with the game still very much undecided was one of them. One key sign of a great team the demonstrated ablity to adjust mid-game; Olson delivered a very similar throwmidway through the second half when he recognized the same defensive set. This time, he did not let the stall get to nine and simply moved the disc to a more advantageous place.
CUT’s blend of talent and intelligence allowed them to succeed. That stretched from the players making the correct reads on the field and to the coaching staff that expertly managed to get the most out of their talented top end. The added TV timeouts that are part of the ESPN broadcast gave both teams’ stars extra time to rest between points. CUT were not shy about playing Miller, Chen, Olson, Baker, and De Morgan both ways. “I think we have a bit more modern approach to line calling,” Schoch said. “We have talented two-way players so we should play them a lot. Especially in this game where we have the TV timeouts.”
While surely annoying to viewers at home and certainly to fans in the stands who watched more people standing around the field, the benefit was more frequent matchups between some of the best players in the division. Miller spent plenty of time guarding Tobias Brooks, a Player of the Year frontrunner who was largely held in check. Brooks threw three assists, but Miller and Shope held him goalless and helped force four turnovers. As Colorado tried to comeback late in the game, it was Miller’s pressure on a huck to Brooks (he couldn’t catch it and deemed any contact not worthy of a foul call) that sealed Mamabird’s fate.
Though they came away with silver medals this season, this could just be the start of Colorado’s next competitive window. Brooks, Ryan Shigley (who scored five goals in the final), both Thoreson brothers, Nanda Min-Fink, and Tucker Kalmus all return as bonafide stars looking for a legacy-boosting title. After making a semifinal appearance last season, Mamabird made it to the final this year and still have more room to grow as their their talented players continue to gain high level experience.
The biggest obstacle in their way might be this CUT team. As if it has not been emphasized enough, De Morgan, Olson, Shope, Newhouse, Bitler, and company are all first-year players. Miller is returning. Fin Fuhrmann is returning. Ryan duSaire is returning. Tej Murthy is returning. You get the point. Just as the division closed out the Brown and UNC dynasties of the last half decade, a new one start may just be starting right before our very eyes.
As a quarter system school, Carleton’s students will be taking their end-of-year exams over the next two weeks. As CUT return to Northfield and prepares for the end to their academic year, they have the comfort of knowing that the team already aced one final.
