Massachusetts Zoodisc won their second title in program history, and their first since 1986.
May 26, 2026 by Alex Rubin in Recap
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Riding a second half surge, #7 Massachusetts Zoodisc outlasted #2 Carleton CUT to win the program’s second national championship. It had been 40 years, since 1986, since Zoodisc last won a title. For this team’s senior class, this year’s title was a long time in the making, following their title game loss in 2023.
CUT entered the championship match as the favorites. The 2025 winners outlasted a determined #1 Colorado Mamabird team in Sunday night’s semifinal, but fell short in their attempt to repeat as champions.
“I’m proud of how much they were willing to embrace the challenge all year,” CUT coach Tim Schoch said after the game. “We knew it was going to be a really hard year. We lost nine seniors, a ton of character, and these guys embraced the challenge. We stayed away from talking about a repeat or a back-to-back. It was a totally new team, but we knew everyone was going to have a target for us and I’m proud of these guys for embracing the challenge of going back to it, working just as hard to try to get to the mountaintop again.”
Initially, it was Carleton who took an early advantage in the game. After a clean hold, CUT sent out their top D-line, with Declan Miller and Axel Olson joining Ryan duSaire, Thomas Shope, and Nate De Morgan. Carleton had a matchup prepared to limit the strengths of every UMass player, and from their first chance, they brought a pressure to UMass that no other team at the tournament had been able to withstand.
Miller, guarding Kellman, took advantage of a momentary offensive confusion to earn the first block of the game. His lefty backhand found De Morgan in the end zone to capture CUT’s first (and only) break of the game and give Carleton a 2-0 lead.
The next few holds built up Zoodisc’s confidence. Mason Stone controlled the pacing in the backfield red zone set. Griffin Gee launched a pinpoint perfect huck to Cam Levine. Tyler Feeney burst deep to grab a wide open set play deep shot from Caelan McSweeney. Ethan Lieman caught a long ball past duSaire.
In last season’s semifinal matchup between these two teams, the Carleton defense outshone Zoodisc’s offense. In particular, duSaire shut down Lieman and limited what Zoodisc could do in the open field. This time around, Lieman got the better of the matchup, gobbling up chunks of yards and making contested catches all over the field. The UMass offense challenged the CUT defense in ways other teams never were able to. “They took the top off of us deep unlike anyone else we’ve seen,” Schoch said. “We were trying to adjust to be behind them and have flatter marks, and they just kept hitting. It’s a real credit to them in pretty windy conditions to just be hitting on everything. It’s hard to do.”
When UMass turned the disc over, their O-line defense nearly always found a way to get the disc back. Roan Dunkerley’s block late in the first half snuffed out one of CUT’s break chances. All in all, Carleton only converted the first of their four break opportunities.
When Massachusetts wanted to bring their best pressure on defense, they stacked their lineup with several O-line crossovers; Kellman, Dunkerley, and Stone frequently crossed over, joining O-line convert Gavin Abrahamsson, Jonah Stang-Osborne, Tomo Liou, and Nima Lhamo on the Zoodisc D-line.
Before halftime, those seven defenders all locked up their matchups and forced a coverage sack. Olson had the disc in the middle of the field, but Dunkerley sat underneath Miller to deny simple reset options and Lhamo blanketed Fuhrman in the break side reset space. Olson ran out of options and his space throw past Miller may have worked out with a bit more float, but instead fell to the turf. Stone launched a backhand huck to Stang-Osborne to close the gap and tie the game before halftime. Stone had a stellar game, totalling two goals and five assists to lead the team.
Carleton kept their composure after the UMass break and took half 8-7. Like in their semifinal matchup against Colorado, Carleton survived a contested, back-and-forth half up by one on serve. Unlike their previous matchups at this tournament, Zoodisc did not seem fazed or bothered by the CUT defensive pressure. UMass never forced a disc where it did not need to go, and played every point with the calm collectedness of champions.
For Carleton this was a new feeling. Other teams tended to wilt under the enormous pressure of CUT’s suffocating defense and the mental energy needed to knock out the defending champions. In the title game, though, UMass played like they already knew the gold medals were theirs, and CUT did not match their energy, confidence, or swagger. “That was the failure of the coaching staff in this game,” Schoch reflected. “We really started to just slowly drain energy-wise. It’s going to take some time and reflection to know if it was the real late night last night, the heat, or if we just weren’t focused coming into this game.”
With their offense holding steady, it was up to the defense to win Zoodisc a championship. Midway through the second half, Kellman started playing more defensive points to help limit Miller. Lhamo had been taking that primary matchup, and hounded Miller for most of the game. Though Miller tossed five assists, his impact on the game was muted as Kellman pushed him downfield and away from the center of play. “At my core I’m a defender first,” Kellman said. “I want nothing more than to guard the best player and it’s that simple. Give me that matchup and I’m going to take it.”
Kellman, and later Dunkerley, taking on the Miller matchup freed Lhamo to make his impact elsewhere. With the score tied 9-9, Miller snuck past Kellman to grab a warning track huck, but Lhamo’s bid to try and stop the next pass startled Ellis Newhouse, who couldn’t bring it in. Kellman and Charlie Norris connected on the ensuing break score that allowed UMass to take their first lead of the game.
From there, Zoodisc opened up the cages and sent out the wildebeests. Stacking D-line after D-line, Massachusetts poured in three more breaks in the second half with stellar defensive play from Stang-Osborne, Dunkerley, and Liou directly leading to turnovers. “I liken it to a pressure cooker,” Kellman said. “You turn it on, and the pressure doesn’t just immediately exist. The pressure builds and builds and builds and once it builds it pops, and that’s what we did to every O-line at this tournament.”
The Massachusetts defense played lights out this tournament, not allowing any opponent other than Carleton to score more than ten points at any point in the postseason. With elite units on both sides of the disc, UMass players would probably agree that scrimmaging during practice is like playing a championship game multiple times each week.
“It’s so frustrating sometimes,” Lieman said, reflecting on needing to match up against such an elite defense every time UMass practices. “Sometimes they destroy us at practice and they’re talking smack and it gets a little chippy and we wonder if we’re bad. It’s really nice because they tell us too that we’re the hardest O-line to go against and practices were so much harder than the actual games. They push us so hard and part of the reason that we felt super calm and comfortable is because every single practice we go against seven really good defenders. Once we face that pressure all year at practice, it feels natural when we’re on the big stage.”
Part of Zoodisc’s defensive dominance was their willingness to play their best defenders in crucial moments, whether or not they also played on the O-line. In previous seasons, UMass was reluctant to cross over their offensive stars, instead intent on offering playing time to their entire roster. While UMass played an impressive 17 players in their regular rotation (compared to Carleton’s 12), it took the defensive efforts of their best players on point after point in the second half to earn the team their first title in a generation.
“What’s especially different and special about us is the fact that we are deep enough to run two or three different D-lines and put different guys on their top guys,” McSweeney said. “Every other team in these last few games have run through the same 12 guys who are exhausted by the end of the game. We can just throw dudes at them. We’re the whole roster deep and we just have more legs than them.” Rotating Lhamo, Dunkerley, and Kellman on the Miller matchup allowed the UMass defense to be more flexible and showed the depth of talent that the champions have, with multiple defenders able to limit the reigning Player of the Year.
In keeping to a longer rotation during the early stages of the game, UMass’ top players were fresher by the end of the game than their CUT counterparts who barely took a point off. UMass also had a slight advantage in recovery time. Their semifinal ended in the early evening, while CUT was up late defeating Colorado in the night game.
Considering the reason why Miller, De Morgan, and Olson did not play up to their usual high standards at the very end of the game, Schoch praised his team’s fitness and focused on the slight imbalance in the schedule. “I’m not sure it was the load,” he said. “I think it probably had a lot more to do with the late night last night and the lack of recovery time. Those guys are in really incredible shape. They work really hard so that not only are they the best players when fresh, but they can take that load too.”
Stang-Osborne’s pull near the end of the game iced the game for Zoodisc. His towering, arching blade bounced past Olson and out the side of the end zone. Rather than get the disc moving quickly, as CUT had done on every offensive point up to that point, Olson needed to check the disc in on his own end zone line. “They did a good job gunking up our pull plays,” Schoch said. “I felt like if we could get two unders, we were off to the races and we were going to score. They did a good job of preventing our pull play and then, from there, trapping our handlers. Obviously down near the cone they did a really good job pressuring us.”
With just one more point needed to seal their victory, UMass resisted stampeding to the end zone. McSweeney and Kellman guarded the disc in the backfield, moving at a turtle’s pace upfield while ensuring CUT had no chance at a block.
“We have this thing on the team, where we have our goggles up,” Lieman said as he held his hands in circles around his eyes. “It means don’t worry about anything else other than the present, and that really applied on the last point. We know that it’s game point and there are a lot of stakes, and we just focused on running our systems like we had all season. No one person has to do too much. Once we worked it up and swung it a few times to pick apart their endzone defense, the shot was there.”
While CUT was playing Miller, De Morgan, and Olson for over 20 points in the game, McSweeney and Lieman never needed to cross over to the UMass D-line, ensuring they had fresher legs for the home stretch. “I knew that we had more than they did,” McSweeney said. “On Zoodisc it’s usually all about ourselves, but I kept seeing the same dudes out there and throughout the game they put less and less pressure on us. Our spacing was a little off, but I knew that we could just work it, wear them down, and slowly work it up the field. By the end zone they were exhausted and we could just walk it in.”
As the offense appeared close to stagnating, Lieman spotted a galloping Stone in the end zone, and the two roommates connected for the game winning score. “As soon as I let it go, I knew it was gold,” Lieman said.
Any title means the world to the people who win it, but this championship means so much to UMass. The team battled through injury, illness, and travel mishaps all season, and their on-field play suffered because of it. The team that is typically playing for tournament titles was in the thirteenth place bracket at Smoky Mountain Invite and lost in the ninth place bracket at Easterns.
“Of every team that I’ve been on with Zoodisc,” Kellman shared, “this is probably the most adversity that I’ve faced. It’s not even close. Smoky Mountain, probably more than half of our starters were injured. At Easterns we literally arrived at the fields at 10:35 a.m. for a 10:45 a.m. game because our flights got overnight delayed. It was pretty ridiculous. We had a lot of people who had deaths in the family, we had breakups, an unusual amount of personal struggles on this team. We just leaned on each other and banded together and that community and that support manifested itself on the field.”
When they had their complete roster, all healthy, present, and on-time, no other team in the country could truly compete with Zoodisc. “Who would have expected this?” Lieman exclaimed. “It’s been such a challenging and long season, but we learned so much from last year and we felt super prepared and ready for this moment.”
UMass as a team will point to the collective adversity everyone had to overcome together, but the personal adversity that the star duo of fifth-year players overcame to make it to this point is a story in its own right. Kellman and Stang-Osborne have both missed time over the last three seasons dealing with injuries. While fans only see the on-field results of two disappointing early exits, both players were working hard behind the scenes to be ready to contribute this season, in their last chance for a college title. “This is our fifth season on the team,” Kellman said. “I’ve poured everything I have into this group for the past half decade with all of the injuries, all of the PT, countless hour. This has been the struggle and the joy of my life together at once.”
CUT end this tournament with silver medals, and they’ll have their sights set on returning to the championship game as soon as next season. With Miller set to graduate, the team will look different, but in Olson, De Morgan, duSaire, Shope, and the many younger players who haven’t yet had a chance to contribute at a high level, Carleton has the makings of another championship-worthy team.
“Year after year people step up into new roles,” Schoch said. “One of the things that we’re going to find some real excitement in for next year is changing a lot of things. We’re not going to play the same way next year as we did this year, and that’s really fun to learn a new system, to develop new ideas, to grow, and to have everyone have different places that they can grow into.”
Though if they’re going to win a title soon, they’ll need to contend with UMass’ collection of returning talent as well. “We’re only going up from here,” Lieman said. “We’re returning a lot of people, and I don’t want to get too far ahead in the future, but I’m super excited for next year. There’s more coming from Zoodisc.”
