Princeton Wins 2026 NCAA Men's Lacrosse Championship
Eleven unanswered goals across one half of lacrosse turned a tight title game into a coronation. On May 25 at Scott Stadium in Charlottesville, Princeton beat Notre Dame 16-9 to win the 2026 NCAA Division I Men's Lacrosse Championship — the Tigers' first national title since 2001 and the seventh in program history. For Boulder County families who spend the spring at high school and club fields, Championship Weekend is the sport's marquee event, even when no Colorado team is on it. Here's what happened, and where Colorado actually fits in the Division I picture.
How Princeton Won the Title
Notre Dame jumped out to an early 3-0 lead and looked like the better team for the opening minutes. Then Princeton scored the final 11 goals of the first half. By the break the game was effectively over, and the Tigers managed a comfortable second half to the 16-9 final.
Tri-captain midfielder Chad Palumbo scored four goals — all during that first-half surge — and finished the season with 48. Attackman Colin Burns added a hat trick and totaled 11 goals across the tournament, while Tucker Wade chipped in multiple scores in a balanced Princeton attack. But the headliner was in the cage.
Ryan Croddick, Most Outstanding Player
Senior goalie Ryan Croddick was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. He made 13 saves in the championship game after a 20-save performance in the national semifinal against Duke — back-to-back outings that frustrated two of the best offenses in the country at exactly the right time. Goaltending decided this championship as much as Princeton's first-half run did, and Croddick's two-game weekend will be remembered as one of the best by a goalie in recent title-game history. Head coach Matt Madalon won his first national championship in his eleventh season leading the Tigers, ending a 25-year drought for one of the sport's founding programs.
The Road to Charlottesville
Championship Weekend came down to four teams. In the national semifinals on May 23, Princeton handled Duke 14-7 and Notre Dame beat Syracuse 15-7, setting up the No. 1 versus No. 2 final that the bracket had pointed toward all spring. Scott Stadium — normally a college football venue — hosted the games, drawing the usual mix of college lacrosse diehards from the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, where the sport's traditional powers are concentrated.
That concentration is exactly why a Boulder lacrosse site is worth pausing on the result. Every one of the 18 teams in the 2026 field came from the East, and the reason Colorado wasn't represented tells the state's whole Division I story.
Where Colorado Fits in Division I Lacrosse
Colorado has exactly one NCAA Division I men's lacrosse program: the Denver Pioneers. Denver isn't just a participant in the sport's history — in 2015 the Pioneers won the national championship, becoming the first NCAA men's lacrosse champion from outside the Eastern time zone and proving a title could be won from the Rocky Mountains. They play in the Big East as an associate member and are coached by Matt Brown, a former Pioneers player who took over the program in 2024.
Denver did not factor into the 2026 title chase, though. The Pioneers finished under .500 and were not among the 18 teams selected for the tournament — a down year for a program that has otherwise been a May fixture for more than a decade. For Colorado fans, that absence is the difference between watching Championship Weekend as a neutral and watching it with a rooting interest.
It's also worth clearing up a common local misconception: the University of Colorado Boulder does not field an NCAA Division I men's lacrosse team. CU's men's program competes at the club level in the MCLA, not the varsity NCAA ranks. A Boulder player who wants to reach a stage like Scott Stadium is realistically looking at Denver or, far more often, a program back east.
What It Means for Boulder County Players
That recruiting reality shapes how youth and high school lacrosse works in Boulder County. The pipeline to Division I runs through year-round skill development, club travel teams, and exposure events — much of it pointed at coaches from the same Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic programs that filled this year's bracket. Denver is the one in-state Division I option, which makes the Pioneers a natural team for local players to follow and a genuine recruiting target for the region's best.
It's no coincidence that so many of the players in a game like this one grew up on box lacrosse, the indoor game that builds stick skills under constant pressure. Boulder County families who want to understand how the elite game is built can start with field lacrosse fundamentals and the pro pathways in the Premier Lacrosse League, where many of these same NCAA stars end up after college. And for the closest high-level lacrosse to Boulder, the Colorado Mammoth play box lacrosse all winter at Ball Arena in Denver.
Princeton's 2026 title is a reminder of where the sport's center of gravity still sits — and of how far a Boulder player has to travel, literally and figuratively, to get from a local field to a national stage.