Fury continue their virtually inevitable march to the final by pushing through a solid Molly Brown challenge.
October 26, 2025 by Edward Stephens in Recap
in the semifinal of the 2025 Club Championships. Photo: Sam Hotaling – UltiPhotos.com
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SAN DIEGO – #1 San Francisco Fury continued their dominant run through the 2025 season with a 15-9 semifinal win over #9 Denver Molly Brown. The victory puts their season record at a cracked 29-0. If they can win a 30th game on Championship Sunday, it will mean they have captured their 14th title.
Unlike in their previous games, though, Fury did not exactly cruise to victory in semis. Molly Brown came prepared to fight. They kicked off the game with a break. Capitalizing on the second of two Fury execution errors to reach the goal line, Manu Cárdenas took control of the offense. Her secure backfield work has been one of the keys to Molly Brown’s success this weekend. Throughout the tournament she has been calm enough to keep the team away from throwing easy turnovers, and decisive enough to shoot the open shot whenever it would become available. She found Ronnie Eder easily at the front cone to stake Molly Brown a 1-0 lead.
“It’s good for us mentally to be challenged that way,” said Kirstin Johnson. “We hadn’t had a deficit at this tournament, and it was good to feel that and learn from that and be able to stay level-headed through that moment and come back for the next O point, punch it in, and come right back on D.”
That score put Fury into the first hole they had faced all weekend. Alyssa Perez teed up another break chance on the very next point with a fantastic, physical box out to neutralize Anna Thompson’s deep cut. Even though Fury got the disc back (a Calise Cardenas block) and ran rampant to the end zone (a dizzying triangle attack between Thompson, Johnson, and Dena Elimelech), the Perez block communicated an important message: Molly Brown were not going to give the heavily favored Fury any slack.
“We had opportunities in the game,” said Molly Brown’s Jesse Shofner. “We didn’t end up capitalizing, but we did the [effing] plan.”
Fury, though, would not take the early break lying down. They took it back at the earliest opportunity, blocking a hanging Valeria Cárdenas huck and turning it into a slingshot-style momentum switch: Shayla Harris fired a backhand more than forty yards on a rope to Liv Goss, and Goss finished the goal with a stylish scoober. Harris’ growth as a thrower – she has become one of the most dangerous and consistent deep huckers in the division this season – has been a major positive in Fury’s 2025 campaign.
With the game back on serve, both sides got down to the yeoman’s work of trying to gain the next advantage. For Molly, that first meant ensuring one break wouldn’t turn into a slide. They turned to their D-line security, a practice they would rely on throughout the game. Reaching the red zone, Sara Taggart and Alex Guy – two players who spent much of the regular season playing for Molly Brown’s O-line – combined for one of the easiest scores you’ll ever see against Fury, a simple open side flick to the front cone.
After a response in the form of a booming Maggie Ruden huck to give themselves a 3-2 lead, Fury took their first big leap forward of the game. Claire Chastain dropped a pass before Molly could get out from behind their own brick, and Fury pounced before the O-line could set a defense.
Fury attacking ahead of the defense has been a familiar sight this season. Up to and including the semi, when they have a multi-player stampede, no one has been able to keep them from flowing right into the goal. They carry so much heft when they move as a group that when they change direction, the entire coverage unit (already redlining in the effort to keep up) flies away as if they were unharnessed cargo on a flatbed truck right after the driver pulls the handbrake.
“There’s not a lot to do once they’re at pace,” said Shofner. “Once they’re at pace and going coast to coast, it’s really hard to gain any leverage.
“And they’re just really good at demanding getting to that place, no matter if it’s their fourth possession or who has the ball,” Shofner continued. “They’re fearless. They’re like, ‘We’ll do it again, and we’ll do it again, and we’ll do it again, and we’ll do it again.’”
Indeed, it would not be the last time Fury careened into the goal box like they were trying to demonstrate a principle of physics. The spread nature of their structure – you’ll hear them echo the phrase “deep and wide” from the sidelines frequently when their offense has the ball – is one of the key conditions for the success of these runaway freight train sequences.
“The more we can be deep and wide, the more we open up the field for that jailbreak style,” said Johnson. “And then once a team stops the jailbreak style, we can punch out of it if someone is wide, or if someone is deep we can hit those shots, too.”
Molly Brown had hatched a plan to try to slow Fury in those moments. “[A] big focus we tried to have was upping our physicality and doing it really early,” said Lisa Pitcaithley.
But once it came down to brass tacks, they found it was difficult to execute. “When they were catching it and throwing it immediately we really could not catch them physically or try to prevent them from getting up to speed,” Pitcaithley said. “We were just behind a lot, especially on their handlers. It was tough.”
It took some heroics from Valeria Cárdenas and Chastain to keep the score tight into the beginning of the second quarter. Cárdenas pranced down to offer a faint lifeline for a stall nine bailout before launching a huck that Chastain left her feet and stuck out one hand as far as it would reach to grab.
It was only a matter of time, though, until the Fury defense – the class of the division in 2025 and a unit some would argue is among the sharpest ever assembled – touched disc again. It came on a preposterous run-through from Ally Tsuji – not a textbook run-through inside the throwing lane, but around the outside shoulder in a brazen display of speed and coordination. It culminated in an elevator pass from Thompson to Johnson for the break, another example of the powerful chemistry those two have developed over the past few seasons.
Molly once again turned to their D-line for a hold – and got it, thanks largely to Manu Cárdenas and Emma Capra (who played an excellent game) – before digging in for an attempt to retrieve one of the breaks Fury had taken from them. They took a timeout, stacked a line with match defenders and… simply could not keep up with any of Irene Scazzieri’s moves after her first cut. Fury isolated their third-year Italian star to great effect and scored in a handful of throws to take half.
“She is so fast,” said Johnson. “It’s really awesome to have that speed.”
One Molly Brown hold into the second half, Fury did what they have done to everyone who has come up against them this season: they put them away. Harris, one of several players you could make an argument for as Fury’s semifinal MVP, continued to rip through the Molly Brown defense with her throws, this one a visionary low crossfield swing. Then they tacked on three breaks on the strength of a Kaitlynne Roling sky (one of the most common sights in the women’s division this season), a trademark Anna Nazarov two-handed layout to save possession that wouldn’t have looked out of place at any point in the last 15 years, an eagle-eyed crouching Julianna Werffeli forehand, and a full team effort to make the only viable throw an upline around attempt – which, in the end, proved not to be viable – to Manu Cárdenas. In the blink of an eye, the score went from 8-6 to 12-6, and the chances of a Molly Brown comeback went from unlikely to virtually impossible.
The impression of a run like that by Fury is just to leave the viewer agog. How is it possible that every player they put out on every line is capable of breaking the opposition’s back?
“I love how they utilize all their pieces,” said Pitcaithley of Fury’s depth.
The cultivation of that depth is an integral part of what makes Fury, Fury.
“It’s a luxury that we have such long tenure on the team that when a new season starts, the veterans are setting the base of what it means to be on Fury. And that means playing through everyone. That means that at practice we’re getting everyone involved on the pull plays,” said Johnson.
“Everyone has a role on this team. At practice you get to guard some of the best players in the world, and that improves our overall team defense,” Johnson continued. “I’m really, really proud of how our younger or newer players have stepped up.”
An excellent inside forehand from Taggart – Stag’s trademark throw – to an acrobatic Faye Burdick reception stopped the bleeding. At that point though, Molly were playing for pride and working through some final high-level reps to prepare themselves for a chance at the third WUCC in Sunday’s third-place game.
Faye Burdick with the layout for @MollyBrownTown! 🔥
Fury has a commanding lead; can Denver make the comeback against the No. 1 seed?#USAUNats | #USAUltimate pic.twitter.com/qPpPUkmcdJ
— USA Ultimate (@USAUltimate) October 25, 2025
They gave themselves reason to believe, scoring in style twice more before Fury closed out. The first was on a classic Manu Cárdenas OI huck that dared Roling to catch up in time to block it (she didn’t) on its way to Guy’s ready hands. The second was a play from Capra that showed, once and for all, that it is possible to de-fang the old Fury handler clearing play. In a heady move, Capra leaned as if to intimate that she would chase the upline clear, and fooled Werffeli into thinking the under fill was open. It wasn’t open: Capra got the block, slapping it all the way to the goal line to set up an easy break.
“Molly had played a pretty incredible tournament. I think they’ve been down by four points in four of their games and come back to win,” said Johnson. “So we knew not to get complacent, because they can go on runs.”
Capra’s play only delayed the inevitable conclusion for one more point, though. Just like they closed out the first half, Fury finished the game by letting Scazzieri work some magic in isolation. She skittered free from Capra’s coverage at stall nine in the end zone to net Fury’s 15th bucket.
Molly Brown can hang their hats on a fantastic weekend: they won two universe point elimination games back to back1 and in the process completely expelled the gremlins that had bogged down their regular season. The semifinal appearance pulled them two steps above their seed (no.9) and renewed their reputation as one of the best teams in the division.
“In a way, we peaked at the perfect moment,” said Shofner. “Impossibly, improbably: Molly Brown will not die.”
The way they were playing, they would have been competitive against either of the other semifinalists.
But they didn’t draw #2 Washington DC Scandal or #3 Boston Brute Squad in semis this year. They drew Fury. And drawing Fury, at least in 2025, means drawing the instant elimination card.
If Fury can finish what they started 29 games ago and finish the perfect season on Championship Sunday – against a very dangerous Brute Squad — they’ll go down as one of the greatest club of all time’s greatest iterations of all time.
GAME WINNER 👊@furyultimate punches the first ticket to Championship Sunday as Irene Scazzieri grabs the winner!#USAUNats | #USAUltimate pic.twitter.com/917crs2KMf
— USA Ultimate (@USAUltimate) October 25, 2025
“We were just trying to get our money’s worth,” went Shofner’s wry remark. ↩
