Brute Squad came out of the gate flying en route to a National Championship and handed Fury their only loss of the season.
November 3, 2025 by Graham Gerhart in Recap
Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2025 Club National Championships is presented by Spin Ultimate; all opinions are those of the author(s). Find out how Spin can get you, and your team, looking your best this season.
#3 Boston Brute Squad won their fifth national championship, putting an end to the #1 San Francisco Fury’s year of uninterrupted dominance with a 15-12 victory in the national final. Boston leapt to a four-break lead to open the game and never looked back. Levke Walczak (5G/4A/4B) and Liên Hoffman (5G) powered Brute with their superb play.
It’s hard to win a game of ultimate. It’s hard to win a tournament. It’s even harder to win a national final. Over the years, Fury have conditioned us to believe that it’s easier for them, sometimes trivially so. Fury win games of ultimate. They won 29 of them this season alone. Fury win tournaments: they had won the last ten tournaments they had attended. Fury win national finals. They did it last year, convincingly. Fury win. It’s what they do.
In the 2025 national final, though, they ran into Brute Squad. Brute don’t have the same unimpeachable record as Fury. They’re not infallible. They’ve lost tournaments this year, and they’ve lost plenty of games, too. There’s one thing they do better than anyone, though. They beat Fury. It’s what they do.
Beating Fury isn’t an easy task. In fact, Brute Squad tried and failed to do it twice in the regular season. Leading into the final, the vast majority of fans and media members alike didn’t think Brute Squad had it in them. Losing to a team once can be an anomaly, but twice is a pattern.
Ask Brute Squad and they’ll give you a different answer, though. Those games weren’t about wins or losses, they were about collecting data. “The whole season was designed for this moment. None of those other games really mattered,” said Boston captain Kelly Hyland.
“We don’t care about the Triple Crown.”
Those weren’t just empty words from Brute Squad. From the first pull, it was obvious they had a game plan for Fury’s offense. Where the San Franciscans had been able to assert dominance over previous teams, Brute Squad stood resolute.
Granted, it did help that Fury started their offense with some uncharacteristic turns. On the very first point, an instinctual throw from Maggie Ruden didn’t hold its edge long enough to go anywhere near its intended receiver, and instead was gleefully retrieved by Walczak. Ruden managed to break up Brute Squad’s offense mere moments later, but the discord was already sowed, and Fury attempted a rushed huck to Magon Liu that flew well over her hands. Some smart offensive throws from Brute Squad proceeded and a connection between Walczak and Angela Zhu was all they needed to earn the first break.
One wasn’t enough. The first few points of the game were an absolute masterclass in how to dismantle an otherwise unimpeachable Fury offense. Brute Squad shut down the throwing lanes, pressured the handlers, and poached off receivers, daring one player to bear the entire weight of the offense. Fury tried everything they could, but never got comfortable.
“I have to give a big shoutout to our Strategy Committee,” said Brute Squad captain Tulsa Douglas. “There were a number of poach blocks we got where you could tell we understood what they wanted and their sense of rhythm.”
The first few points of the game were all about Boston’s defense, but their offense was ironclad, too. After every Fury turn, Boston’s handlers were ready to play dink and doink small ball up the field. There were moments when they tried fast-paced offense, but Fury were often ready for those. Instead, it was the short passes that slowly marched them up the field that were Fury’s downfall. The San Francisco offense had to work so hard for every point that they were breathless and broken by the time they had to play defense.
Down 3-0, Fury knew they had to change the formula, so they strayed from their balanced line calling and threw out a stacked offensive unit. Almost immediately, they found themselves in front of the end zone, only for a backhand to Irene Scazzieri to sit too low for her to bid on it. Boston immediately shot it deep, a little too deep, and Fury got it back. It wouldn’t take long for Boston to find an opening, though. Walczak completely read an openside flick pass down the field and sprinted into the lane to poach it.
Four. Straight. Breaks. 🫢@100percentBS with one of the best starts of the tournament on the biggest stage!#USAUNats | #USAUltimate pic.twitter.com/TWOwCO6j95
— USA Ultimate (@USAUltimate) October 26, 2025
That was the recipe for every point that Brute Squad earned. Fury would make an obvious pass that normally they’d punch through because they were better and smarter than previous challengers, only to be beaten to the punch each and every time. They were too slow to adjust to Brute Squad’s heads-up awareness of their game plan, and it’s hard to fault them. No one had been able to solve their offense for over a year; why should they expect it to happen against a Boston side that had failed to challenge them earlier in the season?
Brute Squad, for their sake, were very comfortable with how the game was playing out. Their offensive line had been depleted player by player all year, including the most recent loss of Lia Schwartz. (Grace Conerly performed brilliantly as she filled in for so many of the team’s other injured throwers.) But Brute were long on incredible two-way players. Between Laura Ospina, Liv Player, Kelly Hyland, Ximena Montaña, and Levke Walczak, they had plenty of players willing to play both O and D.
It was 4-1 before Fury gave themselves the chance to test the supposedly weakened Brute Squad offense. Every point before then had featured a manic push from Fury’s offense to desperately claw a hold, and they were only successful once they threw out a line of traditionally defensive-first players and let Sharon Lin cook in the downfield space. Lin wasn’t the only one cooking, though. Boston’s Elise Freedman found herself in the flow state when Brute Squad took the field. A helpless McKinley McQuaide was falling over and flailing to try and keep up, with almost no success. Between Freedman, Opsina, and Walczak, Brute Squad’s offense showed they were more than capable of dealing with Fury’s defense, something no other team proved capable of handling.
The brief respite Fury’s offense was offered by allowing Boston to torch their defense on the field proved to be all they needed. After returning to the pitch, Fury’s offense hunkered down and got to work. They pushed the pace, made confident swing passes, and didn’t allow Brute Squad to sit off a player without it costing them. Just like that, Fury were back!
Fury looking like Fury should have troubled Boston, but they didn’t seem fazed. They had already won the energy battle, and the onus was on Fury to win it back.
Fury tried, too. The two teams traded holds all throughout the early stages of the first half, and with each goal, Fury grew more confident and more fired up. This crescendoed midway through the first half. At 7-3, an observer ruled Scazzieri out of bounds when she had clearly toed the line, sending the Fury sideline into disarray. Dena Elimelech would rectify the situation with a handblock and a punt to Anna Thompson for the goal, who immediately spiked the disc to fire up her team. The observers took issue with that and gave her a blue card, which only served to get Thompson even more locked in.
(It was a bad game across the board for the observer staff. Both sides had calls that should have gone their way, and even a few more that should have been left to the players to decide. It soured an otherwise competitive battle, but it was also necessary as players made some shockingly poor calls of their own. The legacy of this game will not be stained by the calls made, but it certainly felt like it got close at times.)
Of the two teams, it was Boston who kept their composure best through the calls and the on-field antics. Their offense made play after play to keep them in the game. They had two main strategies for beating a Fury defense that had been impenetrable all year. The first offensive game plan was simple: incremental gains through wide passes and upline cuts that funnelled through Ospina, Hoffmann, and Walczak. Those three players were on a heater all game.When they were dialed in and playing safe offense, there wasn’t much Fury could do.
Boston’s other gameplan was the antithesis of their first: deep shots to Liv Player, Ximena Montaña, Walczak, and Freedman. This was facilitated by the firepower of Conerly and Walczak, each of whom had full field hucks in the game. As long as Boston could switch between the two play styles interchangeably, Fury’s defense wasn’t able to slow their rhythm.
That notably changed in the 12th point of the game. Up 7-4, Boston risked a deep shot to Hoffmann that was blocked by Elimelech despite some testy contact on the play. Fury opted to end the point as quickly as possible, with Harris punting to Thompson, who scored over Ospina for Fury’s first break of the game.
ANNA THOMPSON ELEVATES AND RIPS IT DOWN. @furyultimate on the move in the first half!!#TripleCrownWatch | #USAUNats pic.twitter.com/qPVxF3LCGS
— USA Ultimate (@USAUltimate) October 26, 2025
If that rattled Boston, they didn’t show it. They quickly held for half and maintained a solid three-point lead. One thing was clear, though, Fury were warming up.
“It was small errors from us,” said Fury captain Julianna Werffeli. “Brute did a lot of poaching schemes that limited us, and we were slow to adjust to that.”
The slow start to Fury’s offense completely evaporated in the second half. The breaks that they gave up in the first were distant memories. Every time Fury’s offense touched the field, their efficiency suddenly became cleaner than folded laundry.
Much of Fury’s second-half success on offense came down to unlocking their deep game. Thompson and Elimelech must have made a secret pact in the break to bury Brute’s defense because they connected time and again for deep hucks into the end zone. They played a perfect half of offense, not allowing Brute Squad to get a single break or even a turn on them.
That was the Fury we knew, the one who had proved their worth at every tournament so far. The Fury who weren’t going to let this game slip past them.
Fury’s efficiency suddenly turned all eyes on Boston’s offense. Since the defensive unit couldn’t get a stop on San Francisco, it was up to their offense to keep them from slipping. With the pressure mounting, Boston’s O-line started to bend. Fury were able to find blocks and cause turns in pivotal moments. Boston’s deep game no longer threatened Fury, and they were forced to grind out long points just for a hold.
To make matters worse, Liv Player, Boston’s best deep threat, had to bow out of the game early in the second half. Stomach problems and some hard landings tipped her over the edge, and she was unable to play for most of the half. It would have been easy for Boston to fold after that. Player had been one of the most important pieces on their offensive line, which was already short of a few other key pieces. Somehow, despite all this, Boston’s “next player up” mentality proved itself to be more than just words.
No Fury block was left unanswered, no turnover was left unresolved. Walczak’s poach defense stole the disc to swing momentum back in their favor, Hyland denied one deep shot after another, and Liên Hoffmann put her body on the line multiple times to keep her team in the game. Individual heroics aside, Boston was able to keep Fury’s defense at bay because of the full team effort, not because of any one player. The best collection of talent we’d seen all year –and fully healthy, one might add– was being beaten by a depleted squad that just wouldn’t throw up the white flag.
As Fury’s desperation for a break grew, it turned into the last bit of fuel that Boston needed to find the win. Down 13-11, Fury sent out a kill line on defense. They stacked as much athletic talent they could onto a single line and dared Boston to challenge that athleticism. Brute Squad refused, and took one short pass after another on the break side to move the disc downfield. Fury’s defenders were owning the open side space and completely denied the deep area of the field, but it didn’t matter. Boston’s vert stack was designed for cuts from the front of the stack and they used it to take whatever space Fury were giving them. It may have taken twenty passes, but Brute Squad held to go up 14-11.
Fury didn’t waste time, answering swiftly with a hold of their own. Down 14-12, they knew what their objective had to be: three straight breaks. Against most teams, that would have been a possibility, even a likelihood. Fury had earned multiple breaks in a row at almost every tournament they had been to this year. Boston was a different beast, though. They were ready for Fury in a way no other team had been all year.
Even before the pull went up, it was apparent Fury were going to require a miracle. Liv Player was back on the field, alongside Kelly Hyland, Laura Ospina, Tulsa Douglas, Liên Hoffmann, Elise Freedman, and Levke Walczak. Every player who had given Fury a headache so far was lined up to finish the job.
It seemed like it was going to happen when Walczak hucked the disc to the endzone for Player, but with Elimelech catching the disc at the same time, it was unclear who had hands on the disc first and the catch was contested, returning possession to Walczak. Rather than testing the deep space again, Brute Squad battened down the hatches and grinded out the unders. Fury were so concerned with not allowing a goal that they didn’t pressure the dump space enough, and Boston was never really in any danger of a stallout or handblock. They didn’t force a single shot until Opsina warped a flick around her defender to Walczak in the end zone. Game.
THAT GOLDEN FEELING. 🏆@100percentBS take home the women’s division title in 2025, their second title in the last three years!! Boston is BACK!#USAUNats | #USAUltimate pic.twitter.com/EC8udIE465
— USA Ultimate (@USAUltimate) October 26, 2025
With how much of the narrative of this season revolved around Fury and their defense, what Boston was able to do in this game, and specifically in the second half, encapsulated everything magical about sports. Every David vs. Goliath story is instantly memorialized in the hearts and minds of those who got to witness it. How could it not? We might not have gotten the universe point game that we’ve seen from these two teams before, but it still was the most exciting final of the day and easily the highest level of ultimate seen in the women’s division.
It had been 469 days between the last time Fury lost a USAU regulation game and the final. That’s how long Boston had been preparing for this win. They deserved every bit of it.
