By InsideHitter.com Staff | Blake Arena, Springfield, Mass. | April 23, 2026
The 2026 NCAA Division III Men’s Volleyball Championship final is set. No. 3 Springfield and No. 2 Carthage each powered through their semifinal matches in straight sets Thursday evening inside Blake Arena, earning a Saturday, 7 p.m. date for the national title. It will mark the third time these two programs have squared off in the championship match, a rivalry that traces back to the inaugural tournament in 2012.
Springfield 3, Cal Lutheran 0
The top-seeded Pride handled the fifth-seeded Kingsmen 25-20, 25-21, 25-18 in the 5 p.m. opener, improving to 25-3 and extending their winning streak to 14 matches. Springfield, which enters the weekend ranked first nationally in team hitting percentage at .348, controlled tempo from the opening serve in what amounted to a rematch of last April’s national semifinal.
Head coach Charlie Sullivan, named AVCA National Coach of the Year earlier this month, leaned on the rotation that has carried the program all spring. Four-time All-America setter Dylan Mulvaney directed the Pride offense with 36 assists, building on the 750-plus assists he has distributed this season. Mulvaney also joined a select group of Springfield setters to cross the 3,000 career assists mark earlier in the year.
Senior Carter Durivage, the team’s leading attacker with 210 kills entering the weekend at 3.00 per set, once again shouldered the bulk of the offense from the outside posting 9 kills and a .417 hit percentage. Sam Levinson had 9 kills and Will Kirchoff had 7, while middle Brennan Cutter, the team leader in total blocks, posted 7 kills with just one error and 6 blocks disrupting the Cal Lutheran middle attack. Jake DesLauriers led the Pride lineup with 7 digs.
Cal Lutheran got a strong performance by Connor Crawford notched 10 kills for the Knights and Braden Gonzalez led both teams with 10 digs.
Carthage 3, Wittenberg 0
The Firebirds capped the evening with a sweep of first-time Final Four participant Wittenberg, improving to 25-3 and extending a run that has now seen Carthage drop no sets since March 21. Under head coach JW Kieckhefer, the program made its third national semifinal appearance in his tenure and moved to 7-0 all-time against the Tigers.
Senior outside hitter Ryan Bartz, the CCIW Offensive Student-Athlete of the Year and AVCA First Team All-American, entered the match leading Carthage with 317 kills, 43 aces and 153 digs on the season. Bartz again set the tone on the outside hitting .611 and slamming 13 kills and 3 service aces, backed by fellow AVCA First Team pick Ryan Morey, the CCIW Co-Setter of the Year, who has quarterbacked a Firebirds attack hitting .331 during this winning run. Morey had 36 assists, 6 kills and 6 digs in the win. Ben Heise had 12 kills and just one error. Ruben Emmerich hit .857 with 6 kills on 7 attempts.
AVCA Second Team All-American Ben Heise, ranked among the national leaders in hitting percentage, continued his efficient right-side attack. Middle blocker Ruben Emmerich, who has been a persistent presence at the net throughout the postseason, combined with Ryan Monahan and Hudson Sweitzer to anchor the block. Libero Devon O’Callaghan handled the back row.
Saturday’s final marks Carthage’s first trip to the national championship match since 2022, when the Firebirds captured their second consecutive title. The meeting with Springfield will be a rubber match in a series that began with a Pride sweep in the 2012 final and a Carthage sweep in the 2022 rematch.
The Preseason Rankings Revisited
Back in January, the InsideHitter.com preseason rankings tabbed Springfield at No. 1 and Carthage at No. 4. With Saturday’s matchup now set between those two programs, both of those calls have held up nicely.
A look back at the full preseason top 30 reveals several other calls that aged well. Juniata, slotted at No. 3, went on to finish the regular season as the nation’s second-ranked team by AVCA before Wittenberg stunned them in the opening round. Stevens (No. 7) earned a first-round tournament bye as a top-eight seed. Messiah (No. 8) reached the Elite Eight. SUNY New Paltz (No. 12), MSOE (No. 14), Randolph-Macon (No. 19) and Southern Virginia (No. 9) all earned NCAA Tournament berths. The most striking of the hits: Wittenberg, pegged at No. 16 back in January, outperformed the projection by running the table through the MCVL tournament and into the national semifinals.
Of course, not every call landed. Cal Lutheran, listed at No. 15, performed much better and climbed to a No. 5 national seed. MIT, slotted at No. 29, scored two tournament wins and reached the Elite Eight powered by freshman sensation Nate Toth. St. John Fisher (No. 13) piled up 19 wins on the season but was a top 30 candidate. North Central (No. 20) played itself into the CCIW championship conversation but was not a consistent Top 20 presence as expected. Preseason ranking work in January is humbling, but by late April a few more of them look better than others.
The full 2026 preseason top 30, published at the start of the season, is reproduced here:
