NCDA names 2026 All Central Region dodgeball honorees

The National Collegiate Dodgeball Association closed the 2025-26 season by naming its 2026 All Central Region Conference honorees, a peer-voted honor roll built around six official teams: Nebraska-Lincoln, Illinois-Urbana Champagne, Wisconsin-Platteville, Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Iowa and Wisconsin-Stout. The list landed in a region the NCDA now calls its second-largest, with four prospective programs already pushing the footprint wider.

The peer vote matters here. The Central all-region team has long been more than a stat sheet, and the 2026 group followed the same top-12 standard used in 2025. That is why the individual writeups carried so much weight, especially for Nebraska-Lincoln’s Samuel Lavender and Malakai Shriner-Horne. Lavender was described as the last Nebraska player still able to play with the 2023 team that shocked the dodgeball world on day 1 of nationals, a direct link between the current roster and one of the program’s defining moments. Shriner-Horne, meanwhile, was cast as the next major ceiling case: a player who came in with a huge arm and little experience, then grew into a calm, high-upside presence the NCDA believes could reach All-American level next year.

Illinois-Urbana Champagne’s Alejandro Alanis-Montes and Wisconsin-Platteville’s Dylan Fabry completed the clearest snapshots of what the Central has become. Alanis-Montes was portrayed as a nightmare to defend because of his arm, his catching ability and his game sense, the kind of player who punishes one mistake. Fabry’s selection reflected a different kind of value, as he kept leading Platteville through roster attrition and difficult losses while the program kept taking on bigger-name opponents. The honor roll did not just reward production. It rewarded players who carried teams through the grind of a growing region.

That growth showed up in the schedule, too. The first official Central Region Cup was held March 7 at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, with Nebraska-Lincoln, Illinois, Wisconsin-Platteville and Iowa in the field. Nebraska went 3-0 and finished 13-0 overall, a number that underlined how far the top of the region had separated while Iowa’s arrival marked a milestone the league had been building toward. Two weeks earlier, Zanderthon Throw-Down X at Wisconsin-Platteville drew 10 teams and was billed as one of the biggest events ever held in the Central Region. Put together, those events explain the new balance of power: Nebraska still set the pace, but the region’s depth is finally deep enough to make the next chase more crowded than the last.