Colorado fended off multiple second half comeback attempts from Oregon to reach their first championship game since 2014.
May 27, 2025 by Edward Stephens in Recap
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BURLINGTON, WA – #1 Colorado Mamabird inched one step closer to a championship with a 15-12 win over #4 Oregon Ego in Sunday’s semifinal. It is the program’s first trip to the national final since they last won a championship in 2014.
Mamabird started the affair with a clean hold that showcased the panache and confidence of their O-line. Much of the credit for their success in the semi goes to Ryan Shigley (3G/2A), Tobias Brooks (1G/4A), and Nanda Min-Fink (4G/1A). They were smooth for their first 70-yard charge, although Ego star Mica Glass, crossing over to help give some extra pop to the Ego D-line, nearly took one out from under Shigley’s nose.
Oregon have their own set of high-powered players on the O-line. Glass (4G/3A), Aaron Kaplan (1G/3A), and Chander Boyd-Fliegel (3G) were all just as productive as their illustrious recent history would suggest. Together they (and Raekwon Adkins, who played an excellent game without quite the same official impact registered on the stat sheet) pushed calmly to the end zone, where Glass floated a small, quick backhand ahead of a buttonhooking Marco Muralles. The opening sets were played, the score was level at 1 apiece, both teams were primed to meet the moment – unsurprisingly, considering how apparent the mission had been from both Mambird and Ego all year.
“It felt intense, but as a team we were composed. We’ve been mentally training for this for a super-long time. After of the way last season ended, we knew we could make it to this stage,” said Adkins.
“Ever since we won Easterns, we’ve had the mind set that we can win this,” said Colorado’s Daniel Williams. “But we have to work. We have to work.”
After a second mincingly close moment for the Colorado O-line on a hold – this time, it was Kaplan nearly finding his way underneath Shigley on a bidding block attempt – Williams did the work. His presence in the deep space spooked Alex Hall-Witt into jumping early on a huck. Williams, who has been a sponsored disc golfer at times, did not feel much like initiating a grindy possession that could give Glass or Kaplan or Adkins a chance to make a play. Like Alexander the Great slicing through the Gordian knot rather than puzzle out a way to untangle it, Williams selected a simpler option: one massive backhand to rookie Elliot Hawkins:
Williams, if it wasn’t immediately obvious from watching that throw, is a scratch disc golfer, having been sponsored i the past. “He’s an unbelievable thrower,” said Levi Tapper. “We see it in practice all the time. He dots it up from 80 yards.”
Every break would be crucial against an O-line as potent as Ego’s. They scored the next four points cleanly to keep pace with Colorado, their fifth goal coming on a pair of excellent, untouchable throws: a Glass huck to Hall-Witt well outside of any defender’s range, and a crowd-pleaser of a low around backhand break shot from Jonah Hammes that hovered like a hummingbird for Glass. The D-line would need to find something against an equally poised Colorado offense. Naturally, they turned to their consensus best defender, Ben Horrisberger.
Horrisberger is a natural pest. He’s heartless and unpredictable and close as a coffin. He keeps his arms annoyingly active, and he seems to have brains in each of his feet given how quickly and constantly he repositions himself.
“I really do not enjoy being guarded by Ben,” said Adkins. “He’s the best defender I’ve ever had on me. Every practice it’s hard for me to even get the ball.”
Ego honored Brooks with the Horrisberger treatment for much of the game, and, trailing 6-5, Horrisberger delivered the block, bodying up Brooks on a deep shot and batting away the disc. Alas, deep into the counter Kaplan zipped a forehand too quickly for Boyd-Fliegel, and an immediate Brooks huck set up the second-chance Colorado score.
Frisbee has a way of turning fortunes in short order. Oregon had nearly tied the game with a break; on the next point they gave one up. Glass put a bit too much air underneath a forehand scoring attempt, and Brooks cashed in the chance with two superb upwind throws: a huck to Hawkins, and a deceptively casual blade to the break side to put the half on ice.
The 8-5 lead was a great start for Colorado, but it was never going to be enough to hold off an Ego side who have been pushing for this moment for an entire year. They as much as announced their fighting spirit with a brass fanfare on the opening point of the second half.
Glass gathered an under at the sideline near midfield, turned, and saw Adkins, with a jab of the left foot, transform a potential sweeping continuation on the flatside into a dead sprint toward the endzone. There was no way Glass would pass up the opportunity. He bent an outside-in forehand around Adkins’s right shoulder. It came it at a slightly awkward angle, and Adkins, reading the flight path, had to adjust to meet it by moving backwards. That’s a tough enough catch in open grass, but open grass was not a luxury Adkins had at his disposal.
With the backline within spitting distance and a facebul of Mamabird defender Axel Hartzog in front of him, Adkins leapt up, leaned back, and got his hands on the disc. It glanced out of his grip – just close enough that he was able to make the impossible second effort catch as he fell, keeping all of his points of contact inside the line and bringing the stadium crowd to their feet.
“I boinked it. It happens sometimes,” said Adkins. “But after that, usually on tough grabs like that it sort of becomes a blur. I just went through the motions. I knew I needed to keep my feet in and just secure the disc. But once I caught it, I knew that my knees and feet were both in. I looked to the observer, and he said it was a goal.”
“It was a sick moment, and I think it brought us back into the game with some energy.”
They fed off of that energy to generate a block, as rookie Akash McMinn soared to bat away a too-slow away shot – but the ruthless Mamabird O-line defense didn’t allow any movement and eventually lured Glass into making a mistake.
“We know we’re gonna turn it,” said Tapper. “We’re a bunch of shooters, we’re athletes, we’re taking shots. It’s gonna happen. And our focus from day one was ‘We gotta be able to play defense.’”
On the second chance, Tapper put exactly the right amount of power on an OI deep look to Brooks. Oregon finally earned a break on the next point, taking advantage of a bad release by Brooks to march up the field with ease. That brought them back to within a goal, 9-8
Ego wouldn’t find the equalizer – and Colorado were still in stride. How can you get a break when Tobias Brooks gets to toss off one of his patented pull up hammers?
And how can you fail to fall behind with the Williams-Hawkins connection clicking the way it was in the semi? Williams put a throw into a tricky space and (probably) steered Hawkins to the spot by ESP, allowing Hawkins to make an awkward two-handed layout claw-catch rather easily. The play underscored how valuable and capable Hawkins has been in his rookie campaign. He makes the Mamabird D-line offense punchier in every way.
“Elliot… I cannot praise him enough. He’s so good at being a handler. He’s so good at getting deep balls,” said Williams.
Down but not out, Oregon took advantage of a Mamabird throwing error in their own endzone – Colorado’s throwing execution on open looks in the game was a worrisome trend, despite the eventual win – to draw within one again. They almost tied it three points later. Min-Fink threw a sloppy huck to give Ego the disc. McMinn had steps for a pass that took him near the sideline on the counter, and he looked to reset the disc to Max Massey near the center of the field. Tapper set a 90-degree mark on him, completely parallel with the sidelines and refusing to bite on any of McMinn’s fakes. When McMinn finally pivoted backwards to throw the around, Tapper was already reedy. He dove and slapped it away to the roar of an crowd that had been growing louder and more numerous throughout the round.
Mamabird broke on the next point – Hawkins knifed a forehand over two defenders to a poached Dan Bauman – to return to the championship game for the first time since their Jimmy Mickle- and Stanley Peterson-led 2014 title year. The significance of that history was not lost on them.
“I think this is one of the accomplishments of my life,” said Tapper, one of the current Mamabird players who has made the most concerted effort to connect the present iteration of the program with its illustrious past. ““I know [the alumni] are watching and they’re pretty pumped.”
The Ego faithful were perhaps even more intimately engaged, many of them making the relatively short trip up I-5 to offer full-throated support for their 2025 representatives, forming even more boisterous pockets within the roaring, stadium-packing audience.
“I’ve played in some UFA games with a decent crowd, but never to this extent,” said Adkins. “It’s a dream to play in front of this many people supporting us, especially from our alumni from the 90s coming out here. Having that energy on our side means a lot to us, and we don’t take it for granted.”
Colorado won the day’s glory. But Oregon can come away pleased with what they put together both this weekend and this season.
“First of all, it’s an honor to play on this field in the first place. We knew we wanted to be here, we made it here, and I think we put up a great fight,” said Adkins. “Mamabird put up a great game – and I don’t have any more thoughts on that.”
