Total dominance from the Spiders.
August 28, 2026 by Alex Rubin in Recap
If you have questions about the UFA, you can also write in to [email protected], and some weeks I will feature a reader question in this column. Subscribers can also DM me in the Ultiworld Discord or post questions in the UFA channel so others can chime in.
MADISON, Wisc. – The Oakland Spiders earned their first win at Championship Weekend in over a decade, putting together a stunning comprehensive performance in a 27-21 win over the New York Empire.
Oakland took the game to New York early, poaching initial throwing lanes to keep the Empire from finding flow and putting a lot of pressure on the handler set of Braedan Eberhard and Sol Rueschmeyer-Bailey before they could get the disc into the hands of MVP candidates Alex Atkins and Daan De Marrée.
It was Eberhard’s turfed flick aimed for De Marrée just over three minutes into the game that pushed the early run of play in Oakland’s favor. Jason Vallee and Itay Chang kept the disc moving until Robin Vickers Batzdorf sprung free on the breakside to score the game’s first break. Later in the quarter, Oakland kept their lead, surviving a three-possession hold that cemented the reality that they wouldn’t be phased by the moment. With New York’s secondary D-line on the field on that point, which ultimately made the score 4-2 in Oakland’s favor, the Empire chose not to use a timeout that would have gotten their offensive players on the field. In a game with so few turnovers, every chance mattered and the Empire might regret waiting for chances that wouldn’t come later in the game rather than taking what they had.
“They just had a fantastic gameplan,” New York’s Jack Williams said. “They had a really good gameplan for our offense. I feel like it took us longer than it should have to figure it out and we just had some mistakes and they looked really sharp. It was hard to get the disc from them, and when we did they played great defense. They were the better team for sure.”
Oakland’s defense continued to press their advantage. The Spiders forced New York to play through Eberhard, Jacob Cowan, and Matt Labar (none of whom have ever won a Championship Weekend game with New York) while pushing Atkins and De Marrée out of the play. Atkins spent chunks of the first half floating in the cutter space, bursting open deep without a throw looking his way. During the regular season, Atkins threw about one-quarter of the Empire’s hucks, but he cannot throw them and catch them himself, and it did not seem like anybody else on the O-line was willing to throw deep in this game.
When Rueschmeyer-Bailey or Eberhard had the discs in their hands, Oakland over-rotated their marks to pressure the nearest reset while downfield defenders clamped on unders. The two possession-oriented handlers combined to throw four hucks all season, allowing Oakland to feel unbothered with guarding the deep space and therefore able to allocate more of their attention to stopping easier underneath and reset throws.
“When we were trying to stretch deep, they did a great job helping over the top from the weak side and making us go to our third and fourth look often,” Williams said. “It took us longer than it should have to realize that the weak side was helping a lot and the far side of the field was open. It felt like whenever we went deep there was help over the top. They were fronting us and sandwiching us and we needed to switch the field more often.”
Atkins threw his first assist of the game with 3:24 left in the first half. Though he finished the game with a good statistical output (5A/2G, 898 total yards with just a single turnover), Atkins had a quiet game by his lofty standards and was visibly frustrated with his team’s play.
On the other side of the disc, the Empire defense did not have a winning matchup against anyone on the Spiders offense. Walker Frankenberg, Raekwon Adkins, Chander Boyd-Fliegel, and Dillon Whited seemed to turn whichever way they wanted downfield and found an opening. Dan Ritthaler, Leo Gordon, and Dexter Clyburn attacked upfield from the handler set to continue pushing the disc forward and kept the Empire defense on their heels. “It seemed like we had a bit more legs,” Oakland’s Adam Rees said. “We were just able to just keep running and get open by running a bit more than them.”
The Empire tried crossing over De Marrée and Labar at times to get more quick defenders on the field, but it did not matter; the Spiders still managed to score nearly every time1.
“They’re really good at fundamentals, they’re great at dump sets,” Williams said. “In a tight game when you can always get a free release and a reliable release it’s frustrating. We’re used to shutting down the first look and second look and teams give it up to us, but they were able to go to their third and fourth looks and keep the disc alive and keep moving it.”
Against a team known for its speedy cutters and quick-moving offense, the Empire rostered talented deep defenders like Robert Elston, Antoine Davis, Drew Schnaudigel, and Nicholas Whitlock, and played Jagt as a crossover defender relatively often compared to other crossovers. While some of their height was valuable as length on the mark, these players all were steps behind quicker cutters they were guarding. With Alex Davis on the bench alongside Nima Lhamo and Ethan Lieman, the Empire might have been able to put more pressure on the Spiders offense had they rostered their quicker defenders.
Through the first half, the Spiders gave up just four turnovers and New York could not convert any of their break chances. Meanwhile the Spiders converted four of their five chances to build a 14-10 lead that felt even larger than the score indicated.
The Spiders picked up the second half just where they ended this first: holding easily and quickly while adding another early break. Though the Empire did give themselves some hope, scoring their first and only break of the game with 5:35 left in the third quarter, Oakland bounced right back with a hold and never let their energy drain despite a quieter than usual crowd on a hotter than usual day.
The Empire did make some adjustments, bringing Atkins back into the backfield for more pull plays on offense and setting up some rolling pull sideline double team traps on defense. As the New York defense clamped down on the short field, Oakland felt free to open up their deep game, completing nine of their ten hucks. The Spiders averaged just over six hucks per game throughout the rest of the season and may have surprised the Empire with their success in the deep game. If the Empire were told that Boyd-Fliegel (3A/4G), Vallee (3A), Ritthaler (2A), and Adkins (2A/1G) were launching hucks, they’d probably feel good about their chances. Instead that group, not known as great huckers, completed every deep throw they took. Just about everything was falling in Oakland’s favor.
Oakland also adjusted their tactical approach to New York’s game. Adam Rees started the game on defense, initially to guard De Marrée (though his matchups changed throughout the game) after playing just eight D-points all season. Oakland’s attention to personnel and ability to individually clamp down on easy motion from New York hindered the Empire’s ability to find a foothold even late in the game. On the first point of the fourth quarter, New York put together a 24 throw hold that took nearly two minutes off the clock. Usually a point that long features a zone defense meant to clog up the middle of the field and push offenses to just hold the disc without threatening. On this point, the Spiders were playing a matchup defense. They just managed to take away New York’s first look on every single matchup. The Empire managed the hold, but they also put two minutes of running on their legs and were left with limited gas in the tank to cross over their offensive stars to defense.
For most of the game, New York looked tired. One might think that both teams would have been equally fatigued given that their club counterparts San Francisco Revolver and New York PoNY met in the final of the World Ultimate Club Championships this past Saturday, but the Spiders (who enjoy a lot of roster crossover with world champions Revolver) did not seem affected by the extra ultimate on their legs.
“It was tough to all play on different teams in different structures and then come back three days later, jet-lagged, and remember how we play,” Williams said. “A lot of their team was on the same team [Revolver] and a lot of our team was on different teams, so maybe that’s part of it. I don’t want to blame it fully on that, but maybe it affected us a bit.”
The Empire had players rostered on New York PoNY, New York XIST, Brussels Mooncatchers, Ghent Gentle, Ann Arbor Hybrid, Wellington Wildcats, and Dominicana Blue Devils.
Rees had a slightly different take but agreed that fatigue was less of a factor than other factors. “The main thing was just the travel,” he said. “The tournament was few enough games that it was not as draining as most tournaments are, but the travel was really tiring.”
By the end of the game, the action on the field felt like a historic blowout. New York converted just one of their six break chances as Oakland tied a Championship Weekend record by only giving up seven turnovers. Given that most prognosticators (or at least the pundits on the UFA pregame set) and the Shown Space predictive modeling had the Empire as favorites, such a dominating win should feel validating for Oakland, but even right after the game they were not satisfied.
“It feels great and at the same time it means absolutely nothing. You don’t get a trophy for coming in second place,” Frankenberg said. “We’re gonna be locked in and ready to go for the next one.”
The Spiders play the Minnesota Wind Chill tonight at 7 PM Central in the UFA Championship game, which will air live on YouTube.
they finished the game with a 91% hold rate ↩
