January 21, 2025
By Evan Lepler
As the UFA has grown and evolved over the past decade, Championship Weekend has consistently become an annual spectacle for our sport. It’s the beacon that all 24 teams are chasing, the coveted reward for four teams who earn the experience each season.
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And once you’re there, it’s all about making memories.
When the title, trophy, and glory are all at stake, there’s an unspoken understanding that excellence is eternal. At the end of the grueling journey, it’s a volatile mix of passion, effort, talent, tactics, basics, and extraordinary highlights that eventually lift one team above the rest.
Furthermore, at Championship Weekend, we always remember. Whether it’s a game-changing block, an epic buzzer-beating score, one of the best players in the league rising to meet the moment, or someone making an excruciating mistake at the wrong time, the semis and finals are where legacies are made.
Naturally, these unforgettable sequences are forever intertwined with the setting where they unfold. And when it comes to recognizing the best of the best in this realm, there’s unquestionably one venue that stands above the rest.
Let’s face it: there’s no place like Breese.
If you’ve been to Breese Stevens Field before, you probably understand. If you’ve attended Championship Weekend in one of the three previous iterations at the 100-year-old Madison landmark, located less than a mile from the Wisconsin state capitol, you definitely get it.
Construction of the municipal facility began in 1925, and a century later Breese has been expanded, renovated, and modernized, transforming it into the perfect home for live ultimate. It’s located conveniently down the street from the Square, Madison’s beautiful, bustling downtown quadrilateral that encircles the grandiose capitol building. It’s also charmingly part of the local neighborhood, drawing fans from near and far to pack the J-shaped stands where there’s really no bad seat in the house.
On Radicals game days, engaging vendors fill the space near the entrance and the end zone, offering superb local ice cream, cheese curds, and IPAs. In recent years, new ground-level suites have been added to allow fans to almost fully surround the field, generating an atmosphere that always makes the Breese Stevens experience feel like a big-time event.
And perhaps most importantly, in terms of ultimate history, there’s no other stadium in our sport that compares. Several of the most iconic and thrilling sequences ever witnessed at Championship Weekend have transpired in this idyllic site where three different teams have previously been crowned as the champs.
Earlier today, the UFA announced that this year’s Championship Weekend will return to the long-time home of the Madison Radicals for the fourth time. Seven months from tomorrow, the semifinals will once again take place at this legendary frisbee forum, where names like Chen, Clark, Kittredge, Pettit-Scantling, and Babbitt, among others, have already become immortal.
A quick trip down memory lane must begin with the 2016 weekend, which still is considered one of the monumental turning points in the history of the league. Two of the four teams entered the semis undefeated, including the hometown Radicals, who had pursued perfection with more focus and ferocity than any previous year. There was also the inaugural edition of the Dallas Roughnecks, packed with Team USA talent, coming off a dominant debut season and determined to finish what they started. Thousands of Madison fans delivered the greatest semifinal atmosphere ever, but it was a pair of all-time plays from Seattle that stole the show.
Here’s how the August 9, 2016 Tuesday Toss began:
In a world where instant gratification is demanded and attention spans are short, hyperbole can be troublesome. Even in this written cave of ultimate conversation—The Tuesday Toss is meant to be a safe place to talk about these things—it is risky to offer bold, declarative proclamations that elevate our sport to lofty heights previously unforeseen. Hype, no matter how cathartic it may feel, should never supplant truth.
When you witness a scene like what we saw on Saturday night, though, it leaves you lunging toward the pursuit of context. What just happened? Have we seen it before? Will we see it again? Is Donnie Clark even human?
It is not easy to answer any of these questions definitively, but traveling on this ultimate journey compels us to dive into this search for understanding. Whereas the sport is undeniably rising, it is a time of turbulence and soul-searching, with a foggy frontier that is obscured and mysterious. But we can hope that the [UFA’s] 2016 Championship Weekend will be looked back upon as a pivotal step towards our sunnier future, when ultimate is seen by the masses the way our most passionate fans look at it now.
As someone who has seen championship ultimate played at all different levels around the world over the past few years, I can say this: this past weekend felt like a phenomenon. It was a chill-inducing, awe-inspiring symphony of effort, passion, heartbreak, and victory. It featured countless unforgettable moments and one unstoppable team. It offered greatness, both on and off the field. Between Madison’s crowd, Seattle’s comeback, and Dallas’s dominance, these were the three pillars of prominence, all of which will linger as the weekend fades into our ocean of memories.
It seems an unlikely confluence of events, but perhaps we were that lucky, and the liveliest ultimate atmosphere ever coincided with the most thrilling comeback ever, all unfolding adjacent to the superior performance of the best team ever.
Eight and a half years later, all of this still rings true. The title of that Tuesday Toss was “The Crowd, The Comeback, and The Coronation,” and the first ever Championship Weekend at Breese Stevens Field produced so many magical moments. The Madison fans were unparalleled, and the Radicals first half against Seattle in the semifinal was positively brilliant, but Will Chen’s full-field throw and Donnie Clark’s last-minute layout remain as arguably the two most stunning, shocking, and exhilarating sequences in UFA history. In fact, Joel Clutton’s 2023 buzzer-beating tip to give Salt Lake the game-tying score in the semifinals at TCO Stadium might be the only comparable moment since.
As time went on, the Breese Stevens saga only became more significant and compelling with the follow-up event two years after the Radicals’ 2016 heartbreak. In 2018, Kevin Pettit-Scantling opened Madison’s semifinal against Los Angeles with a massive layout block, and the Rads’ 20-16 victory over Dallas in the title game felt pre-ordained, with the score evoking the full circle memory from a couple years earlier. In between the opening D and the champagne popping celebration, KPS also produced an unreal buzzer-beating score, further breathing life into the Radicals’ championship dreams as he pretended to give the disc CPR amidst the wild post-score party.
That 2018 Championship Weekend at Breese Stevens Field completely reshaped the decade for the Madison Radicals.
As the August 14, 2018 Tuesday Toss described it:
For five seasons, the Madison Radicals had dominated their local competition but struggled to surpass their best national brethren. Entering this year’s final four, they had gone a sparkling 83-8 against the Midwest, but just 1-7 versus the other three divisions.
In two days this past weekend, however, the Radicals redefined their legacy for the era, winning over Los Angeles and Dallas in front of their rabidly dedicated fans. For the first time, they became champions of the [Ultimate Frisbee Association], representing for their city, their ultimate community, and, most importantly, for themselves.
The tears indeed flowed, and for Madison, it was a beautiful thing.
In 2022, Championship Weekend returned to Breese Stevens Field again, with all four division champions possessing just one or zero losses entering the event. Collectively, they possessed the best combined record among the semifinalists in UFA history, a mark that still stands today.
Carolina, Chicago, and Colorado all arrived with tremendous belief and confidence, but it was the undefeated New York Empire that clearly outclassed the rest of the competition.
The August 30, 2022 Tuesday Toss summarized the Empire’s otherworldly performance:
New York only gave the disc away 19 times in 96 minutes of ultimate, easily the fewest turns for a champion in the semis and finals in AUDL history. The Empire defense produced 15 breaks, while the offense surrendered only three.
Final combined score: New York 44, Opponents 30. In the end, the greatest Championship Weekend ever was overshadowed by probably the greatest team ever.
The Empire’s master class in Madison capped their second perfect season, though this campaign was far more dominant compared to the undefeated title run in 2019. Three years ago, the Empire’s 15 wins came by a grand total of 52 goals. This year, New York outscored its opponents by 115. The 2019 team had one victory by more than five; the 2022 Empire had eight, including both of their Championship Weekend results over 12-1 Carolina and 13-1 Chicago.
While Jack Williams earned Championship Weekend MVP honors, the two most memorable plays at that 2022 Breese Stevens showcase came from John Randolph, whose huge hand-block out of a timeout completely changed the momentum early in New York’s semifinal against Carolina, and Jeff Babbitt, who delivered one of his trademarked buzzer-beating scores as the third quarter clock expired against Chicago, vanquishing the Union’s hope for a late comeback.
And even without the Radicals among the last four teams in 2022, the Championship Weekend atmosphere in Madison delivered once again, as it always does in the “Capital City of Ultimate.”
Consequently, it feels both appropriate and perfect that we’re going back to Breese Stevens Field in 2025. The past three Wisconsin weekends all produced historic results; it feels inevitable that 2025 will too.
Opening day for the upcoming season is just over three months away, and the UFA has never featured more competitive teams with realistic dreams of ultimately hoisting the championship trophy. Particularly after Minnesota’s magical run last summer, so many franchises across the landscape are fantasizing about how to replicate the Wind Chill’s whirlwind success.
For one team, it will happen.
And when it does, it will become the next incredible chapter to the Breese Stevens Field legacy, joining all the breathtaking, heroic, and astonishing history we’ve already enjoyed over the past three Championship Weekends in Madison.
Truly, there’s no place like Breese.
