Ryan Baker
It’s official. The 2025 UFA regular season is over, and the Madison Radicals finish the year at 7-5 after suffering a loss to the Chicago Union, 24-18, this past weekend.
With Breese Stevens Field jam-packed, this game was a rollercoaster of emotions for the fans. Madison started out on fire by opening up the first point with a Ted Schewe to Anthony Gutowsky huck score, followed by two breaks.
Halfway through the first quarter, it looked like the Radicals were going to be playing from ahead, being up 4-1. However, the talent of Chicago came right back and punched the Radicals in the teeth. By the end of the first quarter, the game was tied at five.
We saw the classic Madison breakdown, letting up a three-point run to open the second quarter. Despite going into halftime down by four, Madison kept their heads up. Typically, we would’ve seen the Union run away with the game, as it’s been the storyline all year that Madison can’t dig itself out of deep holes.
Coming out of half, the two teams were going shot for shot. While Madison outscored the Union by one in the third quarter, they found themselves down 15-18 heading into the final quarter of play.
A Sam Stark block led to Stark punching in the break to Mac Weber to close the gap to two. It was at this point that Luke Marks came out of the game after rolling his ankle during a collision earlier in the game. Losing the block leader on your team in a close battle is never easy, but it didn’t faze Madison.
Pieran Robert managed to come up with a block on the next point, then got the disc to Stark in the end zone to put Madison within one. The score was 18-17 as Madison was knocking on the door of a third straight break. A hammer throw went up that a couple of Madison players were able to camp under in the end zone. It seemed as if a bit of miscommunication happened as to who was going to grab the throw, and the disc fell through the hands of Max Sample.
“We played pretty well at points. We know we can put ourselves in position to win that game. Also, it’s frustrating that we missed a lot of 50/50’s tonight,” said head coach Jacob Spiro.
The disc turned hands, and the Union killed the momentum that Madison had built to start the fourth quarter. A dirty hold put the lead back up to two, and that’s where we saw Madison cave. Including that dirty hold, Chicago went on a five-point run to go up 24-17. Madison squeaked in one more goal with just under two minutes left, but the life was sucked out of them.
“Our energy was down, but we brought it back up. We saw that at the beginning of the fourth quarter. No matter what, we need to keep our heads level and understand that it’s still a game. There’s still time left and anything can happen. That’s our biggest struggle right now,” said Gutowsky.
Even though the score became rather lopsided at the end of the game, this was still a solid game from Madison. That upwards trajectory is still going strong, considering they were able to stay with the best team in the league throughout the majority of the game.
“We’re still on the rise. This game is a building block to the next one. Overall, not quite as successful as you want, but there’s a lot that we’ll be able to bring to the next game. It’s mostly learning to relax, just play the game, and not tighten up when the game is getting close,” said Spiro.
During the runs that Chicago had, it was the execution errors on Madison’s side that gave the Union extra chances, along with them not having an answer for Daan De Marrée, who put up five assists, five goals, and two blocks.
Kainoa Chun-Moy and Stark led the charge by combining for seven assists, and on the other side of those assists, Nico Ranabhat led the team with five goals on the night. This was Ranabhat’s third game with at least four goals.
“The coaching staff noticed their defensive sets, and we were able to adjust pretty early in the game. That allowed all of our players to get open and rotate through those spots,” said Ranabhat.
Normally, we see Gutowsky on the other side of those assists, but Chicago did a good job of keeping him quiet throughout most of the game. Walking into the game, after the Saturday results throughout the league, Gutowksy secured himself the scoring title for 2025. He added two more on Sunday night, finishing with 56 on the year.
“It’s a cool thing to know and have. It’s hard to focus on that with the loss we just took. We need to get better and fix some things,” said Gutowsky.
The last two weeks, we’ve seen Madison compete and come back against two of the best teams in the league. The games were close and hard fought. While they haven’t been able to get over the hump, they are gearing up at the right time for their playoff matchup this upcoming weekend in Minnesota.
“It’s just an energy game. It’s all about energy. It’ll go up and down during the game, and you have to stay locked in and ride those waves. You have to be able to punch in points. We have to help our boys from the sideline through all four quarters. If we do that, we will find some success going into this next game,” said Ranabhat.
The Radicals play in the first round of the playoffs vs Minnesota on Saturday Night in St. Paul. Game time is 6:00 pm. You can make the trip up to watch, or catch it and all the other UFA playoff action on Watchufa.tv!
