Four incredibly compelling matchups on the final day of the Men’s DIII Regional playoffs yielded four equally incredible results as Slippery Rock, New Mexico Tech, Franciscan, and Holy Cross all punched their well-deserved tickets to Houston with wins on Sunday.
Two of the four final matchups featured regular-season rematches between pairs of conference foes. In perhaps the least anticipated result of the entire weekend, #7 Holy Cross finally got over the hump against #3 Nichols, erasing a two-score deficit early in the second half and surviving a late surge by the Bison to win 36-28.
No one – except maybe a handful of people living on Mount St. James in Worcester, MA – expected the Crusaders, last year’s National runners up, to return to Houston after losing the number and quality of players that they did over the summer. A return was made even less likely with the surprising emergence of Nichols as a dominant force in the NERFU Conference. The Bison had already bested Holy Cross twice in 2025 – once in the regular season and again in the conference championship – and it seemed like they were on their way to another victory behind a standout performance by fullback Joey Yearsley, who scored two tries and went a perfect 4 of 4 on conversions in the contest.
But the third time was the charm for HC, as two late scores by captain John Cox – combined with another clutch score by hooker Christopher Dalton and a masterful kicking performance by James Flaherty – capped off the comeback effort. It was the second time in as many days that the Cardiac Crusaders found themselves in a deep hole and on the brink of elimination only to pull themselves up off the mat and find a way to win. The team overcame a 22-point deficit against Springfield College on Saturday to set up the rematch with Nichols.
The Crusaders will now face off in Houston against a team with a similarly impressive playoff resume. The Franciscan Barons were on top of the world after knocking off conference rival Slippery Rock in the regular season. But the Rock got their revenge in the ARU Final, beating Franciscan to claim the top seed in the Midwest Region and forcing the Barons to navigate a gauntlet of talented teams in the South if they wanted to make it to Nationals.
After surviving Susquehanna and vanquishing VMI, Franciscan aced their final test against the Duke Blue Devils – the third team the Barons beat in 2025 that was either currently, or at some point during the season, ranked #1 in the National Coaches Poll. While Duke got on the scoreboard first with a penalty kick from flyhalf Gabriel Downes, Franciscan responded by rattling off 31 straight points to put the game out of reach and put another feather in their playoff caps. While Christopher Ascough led the team in scoring, dotting down two tries and hitting three conversions, Dom Grecol was recognized as the Player of the Match for his outstanding defensive effort. Lex Lang, Sam King, and Paul and Jakob Leerkes also scored for the Barons while Ean Zachariah scored Duke’s only try in the contest.
In the Midwest, the aforementioned Slippery Rock made it a banner day for the ARU by running roughshod over an incredibly talented Wisconsin-Eau Claire team, 31-12, to earn a second Nationals bid for the conference. Ever since the loss to Franciscan in October, Slippery Rock have done their best to remind their opponents just how tough an out they really are with every crunching tackle and every bruising run. Zachary Herrington, Roman Police, Kam Kruzelyak, and Chase Nething have been the tone setters for Rock Rugby throughout the season and they proved their mettle once again by doing it against a Blugold team that has a lineup filled with maulers and has never backed away from a physical challenge.
The final match of the tournament featured a hotly contested rematch between bitter High Peaks conference rivals Colorado School of Mines and New Mexico Tech. Last year, the Orediggers capped off a stunning playoff run with a West Regional Final victory over a Tech team that had bested them in conference play a month earlier. This year, it seemed like CSOM was on track to once again frustrate their conference foes after going up two scores to start the game. But the Techies buckled down, refusing to feel the sting of defeat for a second year in a row, and scored 15 unanswered points of their own to pull ahead of the Orediggers by one point at the final whistle.
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