Parsing the best games to rewatch from nearly four dozen streamed at Nationals!
December 3, 2025 by Josh Katz in Opinion, Video
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The Line brings together lists of sevens from our reporting staff.
We’ve hit the down period in the ultimate calendar. The club season is over, but there’s still nearly two months until the first elite level college tournament of 2026. To help pass the time during the holiday season, check out our video archives to (re-)watch some of the best games of the 2025 Club Championships. And to get you started, here’s seven games to put atop your playlist.
Pool Play: DC Scandal – Denver Molly Brown
What a treat to start Nationals! After Molly Brown’s inconsistent regular season dropped them into Pot 3, the pool draw rewarded us with a semis-quality matchup in the first round of pool play, one that featured loads of star power. Five World Games 2025 players took the field in this matchup, and all five posted gaudy stat lines: Claire Trop’s 2G/2A and Kami Groom’s 3G/2A paced Scandal, while Molly Brown were led by Claire Chastain’s 4G/2A, Valeria Cárdenas’ eight(!) assists, and Manuela Cárdenas’ 1G/3A/3D, including this stupendous, shoulder-high bid for a block early in the action.
Those stars also stepped up for Molly when it mattered most. The game was tight throughout: Scandal held leads of 2-0 and 3-1 early on, and Molly Brown had a late 13-11 lead. Those were the only times the score differential was greater than one. In what became a theme for Molly Brown this year, they took Scandal to universe point. On universe, Chastain and the Cárdenases had just about all the touches, barely even looking at another teammate as they worked to the goal line. After a brief stoppage, Manu found Chastain to complete the first round upset.
Pool Play: DC Truck Stop – Denver Johnny Bravo
Speaking of World Games players, there were many who felt that Team USA made a mistake in not selecting Truck Stop’s Christian Boxley to the main squad. He spent the first half of this matchup proving all those supporters right, scoring three goals and constantly finding ways to get involved for an unbroken Truck offense on the way to an 8-4 halftime lead.
But in the second half, for whatever reason, he… wasn’t? He still got on the scoresheet with a goal and an assist, but Truck Stop were broken four times in the second half, and Boxley had just a single touch, a simple under and immediate reset, and no other targets on those four points. You obviously don’t want to force the disc to your best players when they’re covered, and full credit to Bravo’s coaching staff for adjusting at halftime to mute Boxley’s impact, but it’s Christian Boxley. Just let him and a couple teammates work the small ball.
Pool Play: Fort Collins shame. – Minneapolis Drag’n Thrust
The second the Nationals pool draw was complete, you could pencil this game into this article. There’s just something about these two teams that ensures almost every matchup between them is an instant classic. Luckily for all of us, this edition was no exception. The first half was back and forth: shame. got an early break to take a 4-3 lead, Drag’n got it back a few points later to regain a 6-5 advantage, and shame. promptly went hold-break-break to take half 8-6, then held out of half to take a three goal lead. They’d hold that advantage until 11-8, where Drag’n had their own hold-break-break run to tie the score. Three holds each way ensued, setting up yet another universe point between these two.
My favorite universe point is one where one team’s star player decides they’re not losing this game, goes into takeover mode, and ends it quickly. Folks, this was not that. In this game, universe point alone lasted nearly 10 minutes, had four different injury calls, and saw both teams turn the disc over multiple times. Ultimately, it was shame.’s Jade McLaughlin who found that last bit of energy, blocking a Marty Adams huck in one end zone and scoring the winning goal in the other to avenge shame.’s 2024 quarterfinal defeat.
Prequarters: Field Pass Broadcast
Okay, I’m cheating a little bit by including a whole Field Pass. But the entire prequarters round this year was incredible, and I can’t pick just one or two games from this round. We had seven games go to universe point, including the showcase field game (which we’ll get to in a second). Three of them (Slow-Disco Club, Phoenix-Flipside, Sockeye-Ring of Fire) were shown in full on Field Pass, and we had live look-ins at the ends of the others (Molly Brown-6ixers, Pacmen-DiG, and Mile High Trash-Lawless). And the fourth full game was no snoozefest either: Chain Lightning and Truck Stop were tied at 11 before Truck pulled away late in a 15-12 win. You may need to watch this broadcast two or three times to make sure you don’t miss anything, there was that much happening all at once.1
Prequarters: Boston Sprocket – Philadelphia AMP
While pure chaos was happening on Field Pass, Sprocket and AMP decided to make sure the showcase field wasn’t left out of the fun. What started as a display of two high-powered offenses (there was just one break in the first half) turned into a grinder of a second half, as each team tightened up on defense. Though breaks were still hard to come by (just three after halftime), each successive point seemed harder and harder to convert, neither team wanting their season to end this early. In the end, Sprocket’s star duo of Tannor Johnson-Go (2G/6A) and Zach Singer (5G/2A) were simply too good for AMP to contain, and Singer found Johnson-Go with the stall count rising at the front of the end zone to keep Sprocket’s dreams of another Cinderella run alive.
Quarters: New York BENT – Denver Molly Brown
After an upset victory over Seattle Riot to close out pool play on Thursday, New York BENT were poised to finally get over the quarters hump and make semis for the first time in program history. All that stood in their way was Denver Molly Brown, who had eliminated BENT in both 2023 and 2024, and were themselves coming off a universe point victory earlier in the morning. For a while, it seemed like Molly didn’t have the legs to keep up with the more rested BENT squad. New York took half 8-6 and eventually opened up an 11-7 lead. But Molly Brown’s stars, who hadn’t missed a semifinal date since before the pandemic, decided it wasn’t yet BENT’s time to usurp them in the division’s pecking order.
Manuela Cárdenas was the key player in Molly’s comeback, posting a goal and three assists over a 5-1 run that leveled the game at 12. Claire Chastain and Valeria Cárdenas were also instrumental, each picking up a goal and an assist during the comeback. It was that duo that linked up to force universe on a Chastain backhand to Vale in the end zone. But on this universe point, it was Denver’s next tier that got them over the line and back to semis. An Alex Guy run through block gave Molly the disc, and while those stars were heavily involved in matriculating downfield, it was a Sara Taggart upline flick to Ronnie Eder that completed the comeback. BENT will have to wait another year for that elusive semis berth.
Semis: New York PoNY – Chicago Machine
The last universe point game of the club season, and the only one on the stadium field, was a beautiful blend of chaos and brilliance. It was an inauspicious start for PoNY, who were broken on the opening point after Harper Garvey turfed a short backhand. The following point, Garvey went down awkwardly toeing the sideline for a catch, and was forced to miss the rest of the game (and PoNY’s third place game the next day). Machine gave the break right back on their first offensive point on a similarly bad miss on an easy flick by Paul Arters, quickly establishing that nothing in this game could be taken for granted.
The madness continued all game. No lead was ever safe: PoNY took half 8-6, promptly gave up four goals out of half, and then got all those breaks back to take a 13-12 lead as the game reached its final twist. Machine quickly held on a deep look to Daan De Marrée to make the game a best two-out-of-three. Each team had a deep look blocked: William Wettengel swatted away a pass for Ben Jagt in the end zone, and Marques Brownlee blocked a Johnny Bansfield huck, giving PoNY the disc on their own goal line. Just like the opening point, PoNY gave the disc away far too cheaply, this time on an Anders Juengst drop, which Raymond Lu easily picked up and dropped into Jake Steslicki’s hands to give Machine the lead.
Machine had a chance to break for the win after a John Randolph drop in the end zone, but decided that they had benefited enough from PoNY’s redzone generosity and threw their own avoidable (but also controversial) turnover on their own goal line, which set up universe point after Randolph atoned for his previous error. For a game so tumultuous, you’d expect universe point to be similarly frenzied. Instead, Chicago slowly and confidently worked down the field, and Arters’ laser beam flick hit Rutledge Smith square in the chest to send Machine to the final.
Including two teams breaking on universe within ten seconds of each other. ↩
