All the happenings and a few key takeaways from the biggest tournament of the year so far.
August 10, 2025 by Edward Stephens in Recap
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Aurora, CO – #1 San Francisco Fury continued their dominant march through the 2025 season with a 15-11 win over #9 Seattle Riot. Riot’s 11 goals in the final represent the most any of Fury’s opponents have scored this year. Despite the multi-break final advantage, the result was anything but a foregone conclusion: Fury trailed by a break early in the second half before the D-line turned up the pressure to put away the game.
Read on for a in-depth recap of the final and comprehensive notes from the entire weekend.
Fury Finish Undefeated Weekend with Classic Rivalry Win over Riot
Fury opened the US Open final with the same all-too familiar hunger and excellence that have made them the class of the division this season. The teams traded a pair of clean, relatively unremarkable holds before the first pointed Fury offensive. Tied at 1-1, Riot ratcheted up the defensive pressure to near-universe point level to try for an early-game takeaway. It was effective, save against one player: Irene Scazzieri (5G/1A), who led Fury’s attack all game with a tremendous downfield cutting performance, scorched every blade of grass her cleats touched to find the open space before icing the point with a backhand.
Then, to no one’s surprise, Fury tacked on the game’s first break. It took them a few chances – they didn’t capitalize on either Shayla Harris’s skying catch-block or a vintage Anna Nazarov layout as Riot tried to work the disc out of their own goal box – but the third possession of the point saw McKinley McQuaide track down a booming Julianna Werffeli backhand to give them a 3-1 lead. Fury’s combination of furious1 defensive effort and backbreaking deep counterstrikes had proved demoralizing to their opponents throughout the weekend, and it would not have been surprising to see Riot resign themselves to a similar fate before long.
But the 2025 iteration of Riot would not be discouraged. On the contrary, they showed a level poise and resilience that, when taken with the high-floor skill of this year’s roster, has marked them as both a serious threat in the division and perhaps the best version of the team in a decade. They crossed over some D-line personnel (notably Jamie Eriksson and Emily Decker, two of their top players on the weekend) for a get-right downwind hold. And before another point could slip away from them, they got their break back.
You cannot say too much about the level of throwing composure from their D-line over the course of the tournament. Eriksson, Ikran Elmi, Meg Manning, Alexa Yadama, and Nora Landri were virtually always effective, and often dangerous. Four Fury downwind overthrows – the kind of turnover they can usually afford given the twin advantages of field position and the strength of their O-line defense – eventually gave way to a perfectly weighted Manning huck to Ella Monaghan to tie the game at 3-3.
After some more scintillating Scazzieri cuts for a hold, Fury broke again to take a 5-3 lead. And again, Riot immediately steadied themselves to ensure the game would not get out of hand. This time, the hold came courtesy of a fantastic deep shot from Kate Lanier to Carly Campana.
“If someone has a step, we want to throw it. It doesn’t matter who the opponent is, who’s defending them,” said Lanier.
The pair of third-year Rioters – and former Carleton Syzygy teammates – have become two of the team’s most important figures, both as leaders and players. Campana’s cutting and willingness to attack with her throws out of motion, in particular, has been one of the keys to Riot’s success this year.
“Carly Campana is, like, my best friend, and also I played all of college with her. We played Worlds before college together,” said Lanier. “I have tunnel eyes for her… I’m working on it. She’s phenomenal, she’s such a good athlete, she’s so fun to play with.”
Riot and Fury closed out the remainder of the first half with holds, as well as a few highlight reel plays. Riot veteran Shira Stern – who, like Campana was a formidable downfield presence at the skinny end of the US Open bracket – skied a pair of Fury defenders for a hold. Fury’s Liv Goss upstaged on the next point with what was perhaps the catch of the tournament2 She read a rapidly tailing huck and measured looming defender Savanna Tucker’s reach to grab the disc behind her head as she tumbled backward in the endzone – just one more example of extreme athletic focus to throw on Fury’s towering collection of them.
Trailing 8-6 to start the second half, Riot went on the offensive. Following their best full-team offensive point of the game, they earned blocks in quick succession – both courtesy of Lauren Page. Page’s effort and timing could not have been better on the blocks: tearing down the field on the pull to break up a Fury possession before it started, then winning the mental battle from the front wall of Riot’s cup zone (a defensive look that worked well for them all weekend) by holding her ground and, like a venus fly trap as the fly gets into perilous position, striking just when Dena Elimelech’s pass from the sideline back to the center of the field was a little too generic.
Lanier was quick to emphasize the way Riot took advantage of the wind to augment their defensive looks. “We’ve been trying [to run a lot of zone], especially in slightly windy conditions,” she said. [The zone] did look good, which was sick.”
“This weekend we did a great job working on our defensive conversion,” she added.
Page earned bookends for the second one, chasing down a powerful Landri backhand more than 55 yards for a tough catch – and, more importantly, she earned Riot a 9-8 lead. Her athleticism, like that of teammates Anna Pettee and Savanna Tucker, is one of the reasons the D-line were able to generate heaps of possessions.
No game against Fury is ever entirely roses and sweets, though, and soon enough Riot had to endure the kinds of bitter moments that can spoil an afternoon. One small technical mistake (too much power on a short throw) ended an excellent upwind possession for what would have been Riot’s 10th goal. A second possession on the same point ended with a Kaitlynne Roling defensive sky to set up a break.
Over the course of the tournament, Roling was often on a line with Elimelech, Harris, Ally Tsuji, and Sharon Lin. In terms of pure block getting, that fearsome cohort are unlikely to be matched all year, and (if they stay together) by season’s end may end up being one of the best defensive units in history.
“I think the other team should be scared,” said Roling. “But that doesn’t mean that any one of us on that line should let up, it means every one of us on that line should push each other harder.”
That break put the game back on serve at 10-9, advantage Fury. Getting back on serve is only an inch compared to the distances traveled by both teams in the back and forth game, but you know what they say: “Give Fury an inch…”
Fury took a mile, piling on two more breaks in as many points. It takes an unbelievable store of concentration to continue hitting your spots for the duration of an entire game against the champs, and Riot’s concentration, one of their strengths throughout the tournament, broke, almost as if they blinked. Lanier and Campana both rushed open throws for turnovers – an unusual turn of events for a Riot side who had shown perhaps the most consistency of any team at the US Open, but an all-too familiar occurrence for Fury’s opponents.
Fury would tack on one more break before taking the game, and the crowd got one more look at stardom from two of their top players: Scazzieri and Calise Cardenas. Cardenas, almost a forgotten star sometimes amid the rest of Fury’s greats, was electric in the final. She showed off serious defensive chops and deep throwing acumen that have been the product of years of fine-tuning at the highest levels of the division. Scazzieri, meanwhile, punctuated a weekend of having her way with every matchup thrown at her with her fifth and final goal of the game.
One more hold each, and the game was over. Fury had pushed themselves toward stratospheric excellence. Part of it is their team-wide skill, but the far larger portion is the unbreakable mentality. I highlighted it during my Friday recap, it was on display in a huge way in their Saturday dismantling of #3 Denver Molly Brown in quarters, and it’s what defensive stand-out Roling emphasized after the game.
“The thing I love about Fury is that we hold ourselves to really high standards at tournaments and practices,” said Roling. “Like, yes we just won this tournament and won that game, but we already have identified things that we’re going to work on for next week. And that’s why I decided to come play for this team — there’s always so much more that we can do and grow and get better to truly push what we can expect of ourselves and for each other.”
That drive towards excellence rubs off on their opponents, too. Riot – who, rightly, held their heads high after a loss to crown what was an essentially victorious US Open performance – were all too glad to have a chance to have to run with the best.
“It’s so fun to play teams as good as Fury,” said Lanier. “It feels like it really pushes us to be like, ‘What can we keep working on to grow in this season?'”
Final Thoughts on Fury
With all due respect to most of the other seasons in Fury’s decades-long run as the division’s apex predators, this may end up being the greatest iteration of the team assembled yet.
Sorry, there’s no other word that captures it. ↩
with apologies to Amanda Dobbyn, Abby Hecko, Lily Johnson, Mackenzie Priest, and Kristen Pojunis, all of whom also had worthy candidates. ↩
US Open 2025: Phenomenal Fury Outlast Rejuvenated Riot, and Notes from Around the Tournament (Women’s Div. Mega-Recap) is only available to Ultiworld Subscribers
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