Presidents’ Day Invite 2025: Tournament Recap (Men’s Div.)

Oregon beat out the other top contenders in San Diego in overwhelming fashion, and a handful of surprise teams stepped up in big ways.

February 20, 2025 by Emmet Holton in Recap

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SAN DIEGO – Cascadia, stand up! It’s all roses and laurels for #1 Oregon Ego, who finished off a mostly comfortable undefeated three-day weekend with a 13-11 victory over downstream Willamette rivals #11 Oregon State Beavers. The victory over an ambitious Pres Day field cements their status as title contenders in a real way. The Beavers, meanwhile, headline a group of teams who made a serious push into the ranks of major players in the men’s division this spring. Some heavy hitters stumbled a little (though not catastrophically), and we have a much clearer picture of which players and storylines will continue to define the rest of the spring. Read on for all the details and takeaways from another boisterous Pres Day.

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Ego Overcome the Field

On Saturday, Ego simply looked like they weren’t all on the same page. Call it a product of ~32 yard wide fields and a 16-hour drive to San Diego,¹ but the Ducks did not look like a number one team in the opening rounds of pool play. Sunday gave hints at their ceiling, as they took a convincing 13-10 victory over #21 Northeastern Huskies and dispatched UC Santa Cruz Slugs 13-9 in quarters in a game that felt over early in the first half.

If Sunday hinted at it, Monday thoroughly dispatched any lingering doubts about this team’s ceiling. The presumptive game of the tournament², their semifinal matchup against #3 Colorado Mamabird, was over by halftime. All weekend, Oregon’s D-line depth had shown the ability to get blocks, but nowhere was that clearer than against Mamabird, as line after line of hungry defenders were able to stick to Colorado’s stars like glue, while still finding windows to poach off opportunistically, creating a number of short field turnovers for themselves. The real edge of the Ego D-line was their willingness and ability to cross over their offensive stars to critical D points. Mica Glass, Raekwon Adkins, Chander Boyd-Fliegel, and Aaron Kaplan each played key roles in punching in breaks. Offensive execution and a dogged D-line performance ended in a 13-8 drubbing, with Ego advancing to play their neighbors to the North, #11 Oregon State Beavers, in the final.

It was clear from early on that this game was going to be sloppy. Wind had picked up a bit, but it may have, as much as anything, been that it is simply hard to get yourself fired up to play a team that is your perennial regional little brother³. Ego’s first offensive possession saw the Ducks turn it over three times, none of them caused by the Oregon State defense in any meaningful way. Eventually, they were able to hold, with Boyd-Fliegel finding Alex Hall-Witt, who had something of a breakout tournament for himself, acting as a finisher for the O-line and productive D-line rotation player as well. He and Jonah Hammes seem to have stepped in to fill the O-line rotational hole left by the departure of Adam McNichols.

Multiple drops and a turf would mar the remainder of the first half, as Oregon State jumped out to a 7-4 lead on the back of some truly heroic throwing from Ben Thoennes and Callahan Bosworth (and some great catching by their cutters).

 

Even with OSU up 7-4, though, it felt inevitable that Ego would be able to mount the requisite comeback. The style of play the Beavers had needed to get their lead simply felt unsustainable, largely as a product of the excellent defense being played by the Ego O-line. With the game potentially in the balance, Ego held cleanly and then loaded up a pair of D-lines, bringing the game to even with Glass finding Adkins for the first break and Kaplan the next. With the score 7-7, the Oregon stars got a rest, and OSU promptly held. After another Ego hold, this time with Adkins finding Glass in the deep space (an area he very successfully attacked throughout Ego’s bracket run), a standard rotation D-line were able to work the disc upwind, with Nicholas Cao muscling a flick huck to Will Dillender-Kinast, for what felt like a potentially decisive break.

The Ego coaching staff all but assured themselves the downwinder, throwing out a line with Glass, Adkins, and Kaplan. After a disjointed offensive start, Oregon State missed on a short give and go, giving Ego the disc with 20 yards to go for the break. And break they did, as Adkins once again placed a perfectly weighted flick to Hall-Witt for the decisive break. From there, the two teams traded, with OSU unable to take the ball away from a now-stingy Oregon O-line. The final score was 13-11, with Kaplan dishing it to Hammes for the winning goal. What had clearly been a tournament of collective growth for the boys from Eugene was capped off with a nice reward: a second Presidents’ Day Invite crown in three years, and an official declaration of themselves as title contenders.

After the game, Glass was quick to note that Ego are not focused on regular season accolades. “[A tournament win] always feels good, but we have bigger goals,” he said.

“For us it’s a process, and we’re not trying to win now,” added Adkins. “We’re trying to win later down the line, and [this weekend was about] just trying to grow as a team, grow as a unit.”

For a team with their eyes firmly set on end-of-season goals, the weekend was a promising sign of an ability to coalesce despite hurdles, both on and off the field. To add to how impressive the win was, Ego competed on Monday without the services of star third-year Ben Horrisberger, who looked like the best defender on site through Saturday and Sunday. Most notably, he acted as the defensive architect of Ego’s 13-10 Sunday win over Northeastern, where he resoundingly won his second matchup with DiG teammate Peter Boerth.

Beavers and Huskies Make Strong Opening Salvos

With Oregon, Colorado, and SLO all ending up on the same side of the bracket, OSU and Northeastern each made the most of their opportunity, forging their way into an exciting semifinal matchup.

For Oregon State, the story of the weekend is twofold. While their stars shone bright, the depth and new pickups for this team were of equal importance to an unlikely finals run. At the top of the depth chart Ben Thoennes and Felix Moren continue to consistently demonstrate on field excellence. Thoennes may have been the single most field bending thrower at the tournament (a real achievement with Glass, Tobias Brooks, Kyle Lew, and Dexter Clyburn in attendance). Moren, for his part, continues to improve what is already one of the best all-around skill sets in the division. Also solidifying themselves as bonafide college level stars for the Beavers were Callahan Bosworth and Henry Wayte, who each use their size in very different ways, but to equal effect as they made for one of the best power throwing, deep cutting combos in San Diego. Where this team has evolved from a season ago is in their depth, as Leo Wolf appears poised for a breakout season as the team’s O-line center handler, and rookies Akira Koenigsberg, Sam Anderson, and CJ Kaperick all showed poise and athleticism to be immediate difference makers. If Leo Renzema (who did not play at Pres Day) can return to health and get reintegrated quickly and the youth contingent continue to improve, this team will be a threat against anyone in the country.

Northeastern’s weekend was defined by high flying offense and disciplined, grinding D-line effort. Where offense was a bit of a game of “dink it around in the backfield until you can huck it to Peter Boerth,” the D-line was a combination of great preventative effort and Jack Simmons’s⁴ possession handling. I should rephrase, there are more people on offense that deserve a mention. Boerth is of course the biggest name, but fellow big men Jack McGuinness and Kalten Toone were similarly dominant in the deep space, and Ben Chamis was consistently excellent in the backfield. Though they couldn’t overcome Oregon State in the semis, the Huskies best win of the weekend came in the third place game, where they ground down the Colorado offense, doing enough to come away with a 13-11 win and third at the tournament. To win in the last game of the weekend against a notoriously deep and highly talented Mamabird team is a testament both to the coaching of Dan Hourigan and Angela Zhu and to the hunger and skill of this team.

‘Bird Tumble Out of the Nest

Their quarterfinal victory over #5 Cal Poly SLO SLOCORE could have been the start of a bracket redemption arc that had looked more than shaky in the final round of pool play as they took a 10-13 loss to #17 Cal Ursa Major. Instead, the remainder of their bracket experience felt more like a re-enactment of their earlier missteps, as the offense never looked like it found consistent footing against Oregon in the semis.

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1. the team had their flight cancelled at the very last minute ↩

2. if our rankings are to be believed ↩

3. Oregon State haven’t beaten Ego in sanctioned play in at least a decade ↩

4. A grad transfer from UNCC ↩