November 4, 2025 by Josh Katz 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.
SAN DIEGO – This time last year, #1 Ann Arbor Hybrid were basking in the glory of their first championship following a 15-9 shellacking of a team from the Northeast whose offense had been utterly dominant until the final. One year later, and not much has changed. Once again, Hybrid defeated a team from the Northeast on Championship Sunday, this year #6 New York XIST. Once again, they won in a 15-9 rout. And once again, it was their suffocating defense that led their title push.
“We have the best D-line in the country, and our D2 is the second best D-line in the country,” Mark Whitton claimed postgame.
When you look at the personnel on those lines, it’s hard to disagree. Hybrid opened the game on defense, as they like to do, with a line of Lily Hobday, Calliope Cutchins, Anna Meilink, Kat McGuire, Nathan Champoux, Dalton Smith, and Jeff Weis. Other common fixtures on their defensive lines include Ben Lewis, Chase Cunningham, Charlie Vukovic, Whitton, Tracey Lo, Sara Nitz, and Maddy Simko. More than half those 14 players had multiple blocks at Nationals. Impressive defensive depth indeed.
Hybrid’s defense set the tone for the final immediately. On the opening point, they quickly forced a turnover on a poor throw from Emily Barrett and went to work on the counterattack. After a few backwards resets, Weis, Smith, and McGuire moved upfield, and Smith started to float towards the deep space. Champoux came under and Smith turned his float into a sprint. Champoux launched a flick huck, and Smith levitated underneath it for the score. Just like in their semifinal victory over Fort Collins shame., Hybrid started the game with a break.
“You go up one break immediately – that’s pretty demoralizing for the other team,” said Lewis after the game.
XIST hung tight as much as they could, and even got that opening break back to take the lead at 3-2. But that was the only lead they’d hold all night.
After an Abe Coffin goal to tie the game at 3, Mike Drost made the puzzling decision to test Champoux with a deep look to Axel Agami Contreras. The disc floated high in the wind, and Champoux leapt highest in the crowd underneath it for a block. Hybrid worked their way down the field on the counter attack, though they were slowed down by a combination of stingy XIST defense and numerous calls. But they found their break on a short Champoux backhand that flew past McGuire and into the hands of Vukovic.
Hybrid’s third break of the half came a few points later, when an Oliver Chartock reset for Jolie Krebs floated enough for Weis to poach off and get the block about ten yards from the endzone. They’d convert in just two throws, Weis to McGuire to Hobday, to push the lead to 6-4.
Perhaps most impressive about Hybrid is their offense’s dedication to getting the disc back after a turnover. XIST had numerous chances to narrow the gap before and after halftime, but Hybrid refused to give them even a glimmer of hope. One marathon point saw XIST with three break opportunities to tie the game at six, but Hybrid forced XIST into a pair of hucks to covered or non-existent receivers (and benefitted from a Jolene Zheng drop) and converted their fourth offensive possession of the point into a 7-5 lead on Smith throw to Aaron Bartlett.
Out of halftime, XIST had yet another chance to break, but Rachel Mast took her chance to put her imprint on the final with a goal line handblock of an Abby Cheng backhand. Hybrid quickly worked down the field, and Bartlett found Laura Gerencser to give Ann Arbor a three goal lead. XIST would never get another break chance the rest of the game.
Tensions briefly, but loudly, boiled over on the ensuing point, to put it mildly. After a turn each way, Cara Sieber picked up on the goal line and looked for the quick score. With no one open and the stall count rising, she floated a pass to space for Sadie Jezierski, who found just enough space to make the catch on the sideline for the goal. Dalton Smith bid just too late for the disc, and may have made contact with Jezierski in the process. Jezierski then proceeded to stand over Smith as he laid on the turf, an action that earned her a (self-proclaimed deserved) blue card, though she made sure to clarify with the observers that Smith had called her an expletive.
Had XIST kept the final close, maybe this moment would’ve led to a more heated conclusion.1 But Hybrid were simply too much, and their increasing margin of victory helped put out any potential fires. After the Jezierski staredown, they quickly scored three straight to open up a five goal lead. The middle of those three was Chase Cunningham’s signature point of the tournament. In a span of about 35 seconds, he: bid past Oliver Chartock for a block, picked up the disc about 20 yards from the end zone, threw a blading flick completely horizontal across the field with the stall rising, sprinted over to get it back, and then fired another blading flick to Mark Whitton, who leapt high for the score.
Hybrid’s final break, their sixth of the game, was every bit as effortless as the rest. Tight defense forced a difficult throw that Jolie Krebs couldn’t secure. Cunningham picked up and, in three throws, Hybrid were on the brink of a title. Cunningham to Weis to Hobday to Simko, for a 14-8 lead. They’d finish it off two points later on a Mast-to-Mast connection. Fittingly, it was Rachel scoring the championship winning goal after she missed last year’s final due to injury, capping off a sterling season for her.
While it wasn’t the fairytale ending XIST wanted for their storybook season, there’s still much to take away.
“We had goals we wanted to achieve and we met almost all of them, except for the championship part. But I’m so proud of this team. Of the work we’ve put in and the buy-in,” said XIST captain Emily Barrett afterwards. “Jolie said it best in the huddle, ‘I wouldn’t want to lose with anyone else.’”
Ultimately, there was no one who could keep up with Ann Arbor Hybrid this year. Whitton put it simply, “This team is incredible. I don’t think we were ever really pressured, to be honest. Outside of PEC, the closest score at half was 8-6 a couple times… and that really let us just enjoy the little things along the way.”
The numbers bear out that dominance: after PEC, they had over twice as many games where they held their opponent under ten (12) as they did games with a margin of victory of three or fewer (5) at TCT tournaments. Hybrid’s rapid ascent to becoming the division’s premier program is not lost on him.
“It’s kind of crazy to go from a Regionals level team in 2019 to four of five finals and winning two,” said Whitton. “I definitely didn’t like my first time here, but every time since it’s been pretty nice.”
Jezierski did make a late bid into the back of Maketa Mattimore on the next point. ↩
