Big plays in the second half from Hybrid -- and big time play from stars Maketa Mattimore and Aaron Bartlett -- took down Austin Disco Club.
August 11, 2025 by Laura Osterlund in Recap
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AURORA – In an electrifying match that remained close until the very end, defending national champions #6 Ann Arbor Hybrid claimed their second US Open title, winning against #16 Austin Disco Club 15-13. Hybrid are now the second team in a row (AMP did the same in 2022 and ‘23) to win back-to-back US Open titles.
Hybrid Pull The Plug In The Club (But No Panic At This Disco)
Despite what was in the end a dominant weekend, and although they started the final on offense, Hybrid were not in the driver’s seat for the whole time and did not have a lead early on in the US Open mixed final. Because, much like a mirrorball, Disco Club lit up the field right off the bat as they forced a turnover on the first point of the game and broke to start. Not wanting to give up another early break, the points that followed contained clean offense, generally ending in a huck to score. That was, however, until the fifth point of the game, at 2-2, with Disco Club receiving, when both teams tried their luck at another deep shot each and became a victim of the altitude, a noted problem that teams ran into throughout the weekend, despite the chances they had to adjust. In their second offensive attempt, Madi Cannon practically led the Texans’ offense, and Joey Wylie shook free from his defender to capture the dirty hold.
To make it to the final, Austin had a bit of an uphill battle. Their first game of the tournament started out with a 7-2 deficit against #23 Arizona Lawless, and they clawed back slowly to win 15-13. Even in their semifinal against #7 Minneapolis Drag’n Thrust, they gave up four straight breaks right off the bat, only to go on a 5-0 run and hold for the rest of the game and win 15-14 on a universe point. While their trajectory has not been as predictable as teams with longer-standing programs, if this weekend taught us anything, it’s that they’re not to be counted out.
“We’ve just been going over our system, and every time we play a game, it gets better and better,” said Madi Cannon after the semifinal. “Our coach, Skip [Sewell], and our captains have really been drilling it into us. And I think the big thing here is just that everyone’s super positive, no matter what. Our mental game has gotten better every game. We’ve went down and have come back, so I think that’s a huge win for us.”
With the ensuing couple of points of the final being holds with little turmoil, ADC decided to change up their marking strategies, which produced a turn. But, just as Disco Club looked to get another break, taking a timeout to set up an end zone play, Jonathan Mast read their floaty pass perfectly for a block, allowing the Hybrid offense to move quickly down the field, never letting the stall count get higher than stall three, and resulting in a Hybrid score. After a few more clean points, Disco Club once again saw the huck on their goal attempt fly out of the back of the end zone. After some stagnation in the stack, Nathan Champoux hit a huck to Mark Whitton, who found Mast for Hybrid’s first break of the game, giving the Michiganders just the spark they needed to jolt them ahead of their competition. When Hybrid forced another turn on an inside throw, Hybrid secured another break to lead 7-5, the game’s largest lead at that point.
In their next offensive point, Hybrid once again had trouble with the flat marks and gave up a turn, but not giving the Texans1 another chance tie it up, they valued possession, and Rachel Mast hit Aaron Bartlett for his fifth score that he had been involved with so far in that game, taking the game to half at 8-6.
The start of the second half looked a lot like the first, with both teams succeeding with their small-ball offenses, being punished for their deep looks. After Hybrid’s offensive line scored two holds in a row that featured rather impressive contested catches by Abe Coffin, they decided to come out even hotter on defense. After just a couple of Disco Club throws in the handler space in their defending end zone, Annalise Meilink swatted the incoming swing and caught the now-floating disc for an “unassisted”2 Callahan3 to go up 11-8 igniting their energy and fanning their flame.
“Disco Club is a really athletic team, and I think normally Hybrid is the more athletic team, so that was a particular challenge,” said Hybrid’s Maketa Mattimore. “They’re a team that likes to come back and likes to work really hard, so our captains were adaptive during halftime and we were trying really hard to take no arounds. We knew their MMPs like to shred the give-and-go, so that’s what we were trying to take away there. And just winning with our legs, always working harder than our competition. Our D-line generated a lot of turns, we weren’t able to finish all of them, but they worked really hard.”
Against an average team, that blow could have been a final nail in the coffin, ceding control of the game over to their opponents. But not for Austin Disco Club. After their next hold (11-9), Nikki Gilbert made a momentum-shifting run-through D, allowing Myles Armstrong to hit Brian Street for the Austin break. With the Disco defense looking finally plugged themselves in and woken up, Reese Bowman took his turn to get a block, and after showcasing their Goaltimate throws, including a push-pass and a lefty backhand, they had officially tied the score back up to 11-11. And just like that, much like the genre in the 2010s4, Disco started to make a comeback.
“Our handler D was killing it. We were making them throw high-stall throws into the wind and we were getting those chances. We let go of the gas pedal a little bit and we won’t next time,” Cannon said.
“Our marks were killing it, the handler defense was making them throw to their third or fourth option. Sometimes they threw bailout shots that worked our way. But the underneath defense, they struggled with that,” continued Eric Brodbeck. “On offense, (we were) trusting every single person. We moved it through every one of the five deep cuts.”
“We were trusting our system,” added Cannon. “Our system worked the entire time, at some points we were taking shots that were not necessary, and the next time, we’d dial it in.”
With the high-voltage game being anyone’s to win, Hybrid never ran out of juice and played hard to ensure they kept the lead, with many athletic plays to maintain possession, including one from Mattimore for a goal. Throughout the game, Mattimore had a commanding presence on the field, collecting six goals, including a ballerina-esque single-handed catch of a scoober and another layout score later on in the game, one assist, and many other grabs in the deep space. Alongside Mattimore, Aaron Bartlett made big plays on offense, showing why he is the reigning OPOTY.
“Hybrid’s a very good team full of very experienced players and we knew we had to take some chances here and there,” said Brodbeck. “They gave us opportunities, we played our system well, we just didn’t capitalize on all of the opportunities.”
“It was a new system that we came up with for this (game) in the end zone and I think we executed it pretty well, but come Nationals, no one’s getting into the end zone,” Cannon added.
Although Disco were still not out, as they made bidding plays of their own to hold two more times, they found their O-line making mistakes later on in the game. One of which was converted into a Hybrid break, while the other they got back. However, it was too late for the Texas outfit, as they could not force Hybrid to make any more mistakes, and by sliding easily through the defense, Jonathan Mast hit Bartlett with an arching upline throw to seal the game once and for all with a final score of 13-15.
well, the team from Texas, not the team with Texans on it — Hybrid have a handful of them ↩
stadium announcer’s words ↩
Interesting factoid: it was the same end zone of the same field and similar throw to where Nathan Champoux scored a Callahan in the 2024 US Open Final where they won against BFG and in both games, it was Hybrid’s 11th goal ↩
Editor’s note: and 1990s ↩
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