Object getting destroyed ?

I'm writing a script that controls the sprite and text of some objects changing them on the fly. However i've been having problems getting it to work and have narrowed down the problem. When i create the teamData object, at the end of the start function it's not null. However when entering the IncreasePlayerTeam function it is as null and i can't figure out why. I'm fairly new to unity, is there something i'm missing? The code has been stripped down to show the problem

 public class TeamSelectController : MonoBehaviour {
 
     TextMesh p1Txt;
     LoadTeams teamData; 
 
     // Use this for initialization
     void Start () 
     {
         p1Txt = (TextMesh)GameObject.Find ("p1TeamTxt").GetComponent<TextMesh>();
 
         teamData = new LoadTeams(); // constructs fine and logs the correct data
         if (teamData == null) // this is fine and doesn't return null
             p1Txt.text = "initial error";
 
     }
 
     public void IncreasePlayerTeam()
     {
         if (teamData == null) //returns null here 
              {p1Txt.text = "test";}//text changes to test
     }

}

Called from another script :

 void Update () 
 {
     if (Input.touches.Length > 0) 
     {
         Touch t = Input.GetTouch(0); ;
             
         if (t.phase == TouchPhase.Ended) 
         {
             var tapPos = new Vector2 (t.position.x, t.position.y);
 
                 if(p1IncBtn.OverlapPoint(mainCam.ScreenToWorldPoint(tapPos)))
                   {
                     if(buttonController.GetComponent<TeamSelectController>() != null)
                         buttonController.GetComponent<TeamSelectController>().IncreasePlayerTeam();
                   }

forgot to show the loadteam class :

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections;
 using System.Xml.Serialization;
 using System.IO;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 
 public class Team
     
 {
     public string teamName;
     public string group;
     
 }
 
 [XmlRoot("TeamsCollection")]
 public class TeamsCollection
     
 {
     [XmlArray("Teams")]
     [XmlArrayItem("Team")]
     public List<Team> teams = new List<Team>();
 }
 
 
 public class LoadTeams 
 {
 
     public TeamsCollection teamCol;
     // Use this for initialization
     public LoadTeams() 
     {
         FileStream fs = new FileStream("Assets/teams.xml", FileMode.Open);
 
         XmlSerializer serial = new XmlSerializer(typeof(TeamsCollection));
         teamCol = (TeamsCollection)serial.Deserialize(fs);
 
         for (int i=0; i < teamCol.teams.Count; i++) 
         {
             Debug.Log("Team: "+teamCol.teams[i].teamName+" - Group: "+teamCol.teams[i].group);    
         }
 
     
     }
 
 }