What Zach Currier’s 68 Ground Balls Actually Set

Zach Currier collected 68 ground balls in the 2026 PLL regular season, setting the league’s single-season record for a player who is neither a faceoff specialist nor a long pole. The PLL used that category in its September 18 end-of-year awards announcement. Currier’s official statistics list 11 regular-season appearances, giving him 6.18 ground balls per appearance.

The Philadelphia Waterdogs midfielder’s achievement is a category-specific record, not an unrestricted PLL ground ball record. Both exclusions belong in the description. Dropping either one changes the population being compared and makes a broader claim than the league’s announcement supports.

Choose the claim you want to check; the tool shows whether these sources support it.

The Record Is 68 In A Defined Regular-Season Category

Currier’s official 2026 statistics page, checked October 8, 2026, lists 68 ground balls in 11 regular-season appearances. The statistics establish his total and appearances; the awards announcement establishes the record category. Those are separate pieces of evidence, and both are needed for a complete record-book entry.

Item	Verified Scope
Player and team	Zach Currier, Philadelphia Waterdogs
Competition	PLL outdoor field lacrosse
Season and coverage	2026 regular season
Ground balls	68
Player appearances	11
Ground balls per appearance	6.18, calculated
Record category	Non-faceoff specialist, non-long pole

The total is not a single-game figure. It is not Currier’s career accumulation, and it excludes postseason ground balls. A reader looking for any of those figures needs a different statistical entry; the 68 cannot be carried across those boundaries.

The record category also does not mean that Currier had more ground balls than every player in the league, regardless of role. The announcement specifically excludes faceoff specialists and long poles. It establishes his record within the remaining group, rather than supplying an unrestricted all-position record comparison.

A concise, accurate label is “2026 PLL regular-season ground ball record for a non-faceoff specialist, non-long pole: Zach Currier, 68.” That wording preserves the season, competition, statistic and eligibility rules without requiring a separate correction underneath it.

His Per-Appearance Rate Uses 11 Games, Not 12

Currier’s rate is calculated as 68 ground balls divided by 11 appearances, yielding 6.18 ground balls per appearance when rounded to two decimal places. This is a calculation from the published total and appearances, not a separate record claim by the league.

The Waterdogs finished the regular season 9–3, according to the league’s awards report. Their record accounts for 12 team games. Currier’s statistics, however, list 11 appearances, so the team’s schedule length is not the denominator for his individual per-appearance average.

That distinction matters when a table uses the shorthand “GB/G.” For this entry, the denominator must be Currier’s appearances. Dividing his total by the Waterdogs’ games would answer a different question: how his ground balls were distributed across the team’s schedule, including a game outside his appearance count.

The average does not describe the ground balls in any particular game. Nor does it show whether his production was evenly distributed across those appearances. The cited season total provides no game-by-game distribution here, so it cannot establish his highest individual game or the number of games in which he reached a particular threshold.

Use the total to describe the record and the rate to describe his production per appearance. Neither should replace the other: 68 is the league-recognized single-season mark in this category, while 6.18 is the calculated rate accompanying it.

Occasional Faceoffs Did Not Make Him A Faceoff Specialist

In its September 4 Waterdogs profile, the PLL described Currier playing midfield and short-stick defensive midfield, lining up on faceoff wings and taking some faceoffs himself. The profile said he had played mostly short-stick defensive midfield, or SSDM, that season.

Those duties explain why “non-faceoff specialist” is more precise than “never took a faceoff.” The league’s category concerns his role, not an assertion that his faceoff participation was zero. His occasional draws did not prevent the PLL from identifying him as eligible for this record.

The September 4 profile described his 68 ground balls as “a PLL record for a non-faceoff player,” previously held by Currier himself. The September 18 awards announcement used the narrower wording: “non-faceoff specialist, non-long pole.” The later wording explicitly includes the long-pole exclusion and avoids implying that Currier never took a draw.

Neither description provides a breakdown of where the 68 ground balls occurred. His wing duties and faceoff participation do not establish how many came during faceoff sequences, and his SSDM role does not establish how many came elsewhere. Calling them all “non-faceoff ground balls” would turn a player-category description into an unsupported classification of individual plays.

For the same reason, the record should not be presented as a measure of ground balls collected exclusively while playing SSDM. The profile describes overlapping duties; the statistical total belongs to Currier’s regular season as a player, not to a documented allocation among those duties.

“Non-Long Pole” Must Stay In The Record Label

The long-pole exclusion is easy to lose when shortening the announcement to “non-faceoff record.” That abbreviation is incomplete for this entry. It leaves open a comparison with long-pole players that the awards announcement specifically excludes.

This is not a minor stylistic distinction. A record is defined by the players eligible for comparison as well as by the number at the top. Removing an exclusion expands that comparison group. The cited announcement does not establish whether 68 would remain the record in the expanded group.

“Midfielder record” is not an exact substitute either. Currier’s position labels vary across the sources, and the league’s record statement is phrased through exclusions rather than through a single roster position. Replacing that language with a broader positional label introduces an eligibility rule the announcement did not state.

For a compact table, “Non-FO Specialist / Non-Long Pole” can work if the abbreviations are explained nearby. For prose, the full phrase is clearer. A heading or social caption that says only “PLL ground ball record” needs the missing qualifications in the same claim, not buried in a later paragraph.

The safest approach is to keep the league’s complete category alongside the 68 wherever the number is being presented as a record.

His Award And Roster Position Describe Different Things

The PLL named Currier its Gait Brothers Midfielder of the Year for the second time, following his earlier award in 2021. His official player profile lists his position as Defensive Midfield. Meanwhile, the Waterdogs feature describes what he actually did across several assignments during the season.

These descriptions need not be collapsed into one label. The award identifies the category in which the league recognized him. The player profile supplies his listed position. The feature gives a more detailed account of his duties. None changes the wording of the ground ball record in the awards announcement.

This matters when placing Currier in an SSDM comparison. A positional statistics table may group players by roster designation, award category or playing role. Those approaches can produce different comparison groups even when the underlying ground ball totals are unchanged.

The same distinction applies when reading Brian Tevlin’s 2026 SSDM stats and positional rankings. Before treating two rankings as equivalent, check whether they use the same definition of SSDM and the same season coverage. Currier’s ground ball record does not, by itself, settle every SSDM ranking or establish a record under every possible definition of the position.

For this achievement, the league’s explicit “non-faceoff specialist, non-long pole” category is more reliable than reconstructing eligibility from an award name or roster label.

The Sources Establish A Previous Recordholder, Not A Margin

The September 4 profile says Currier previously held the record himself. That supports describing the 2026 achievement as an improvement on his own earlier mark. The supplied material does not give the previous total or identify the season in which he set it.

Without those figures, the record’s numerical improvement cannot be calculated. There is no supported basis here for saying he broke the old mark by a particular number of ground balls, or for naming a previous season as the one he surpassed.

The material also does not identify the nearest challenger in 2026 or provide a complete historical leaderboard for eligible players. The league’s record announcement supports the verdict, but it is not the same thing as a published table showing every competing total.

That leaves several useful distinctions intact: the new mark is known, its category is known, and the prior holder is identified as Currier. The old mark, margin of improvement and runner-up total remain unspecified in these sources.

A record summary should leave those fields blank rather than infer them from unrelated season statistics. Knowing that a player previously held a record is not enough to reconstruct the history of that record.

This PLL Mark Does Not Establish A Box Or College Record

The 68 belongs to PLL outdoor field lacrosse. It is not presented as an NCAA record, an NLL box-lacrosse loose-ball record or a combined professional career total. Those competitions and statistical contexts fall outside the scope of the cited announcement.

A cross-league comparison would need its own evidence: the relevant statistic, season coverage, player category and competing totals. Currier’s PLL record statement supplies none of those for another league. His name and a possession-related statistic are not sufficient grounds for treating separate record books as interchangeable.

Even within PLL comparisons, preserve both the category and appearances. The category establishes who belongs in the record comparison; appearances help explain the scale of an individual season’s production. A total comparison and a per-appearance comparison answer different questions.

The cited sources establish the single-season total record in the stated category. They do not establish a record for his 6.18 rate. Presenting that calculated average as a league record would require additional historical rate data, which the supplied material does not contain.

Use The Full Claim When Citing The Achievement

The publication-ready summary is: Zach Currier set the PLL’s 2026 regular-season ground ball record for a non-faceoff specialist, non-long pole with 68 ground balls in 11 appearances. His calculated average was 6.18 per appearance.

That statement keeps the record and the supporting rate distinct. It also avoids treating his occasional faceoff participation as a contradiction, confusing his appearances with the Waterdogs’ 12-game schedule, or extending a regular-season figure into the postseason.

For source attribution, use the September 18 awards announcement for the record’s exact category and the official statistics page for the total and appearances. Use the September 4 profile to explain his mixed duties and the statement that he previously held the record himself.

What remains unknown from the supplied material is equally specific: the previous record total and season, the margin by which he improved it, the unrestricted PLL record, and any record status for his per-appearance average. None is needed to recognize the achievement accurately, but none should be added to the claim without separate evidence.