By Ryan Baker
“The Capital City of Ultimate” is finally opening back up at Breese Stevens Field for Madison Radicals frisbee! This Saturday night the Radicals host the Pittsburgh Thunderbirds in their 2025 home opener, and this game may be better than most people may think.
Prior to the season and right now, Madison and Pittsburgh were essentially even in the league power rankings battling for the third seed in the Central Division. While anything can happen during the remainder of the season, this Saturday night’s matchup could serve to be a big factor come playoff time.
The Thunderbirds stand at 2-0 with wins over Indianapolis and Detroit. Meanwhile, the Radicals have had a week off since coming back 1-1 from their Texas trip, beating the Havoc and losing to the Sol.
Madison will need to clean up several things from their road trip to be able to notch their second win of the season. It’s hard to compare stats this early in the season, especially when the Radicals dealt with a stopped affair two weeks ago. The young Radicals need to get more comfortable on offense. They need to find a happy medium for releasing their deep shots, and grinding out unders for long points.
Looking at the rosters, it’s much of the same look for Madison. Impact players like Anthony Gutowsky, Jack Nelson, and Mitchell McCarthy will surely have their stamp on the game, but it will be a matter of if they and the rest of the team can bring their play together.
Can Nelson keep up his throwing effectiveness that’s resulted in five assists in two games? Can McCarthy make as big of an impact on offense after a turn as much as he does on defense? Can Gutowsky expand his game past being a scoring machine? These are all questions that need to be answered yes for Madison to build some momentum on the season.
“Our focus has been fixing the little things we didn’t have sharpened in Texas. Getting our flow down offensively and getting our dog back on defense. The crowd is going to bring the energy to us, and it’s the best advantage we could ask for,” said Nelson.
It’s not just those three players that will make an impact. Kainoa Chun-Moy will be making his Breese Stevens Field debut in a Radicals jersey after having a great season debut down south. Veterans Joshua Wilson and Kelsen Alexander provide an evident calmness on the field and will do so this weekend.
As for their opponent, Pittsburgh will be without Aiden Landis and Anil Driehuys, two games that have had great starts to the season. The focus for the Madison defense will be on Will Hoffenkamp, Jonathan Mast, Marcel Oliart, and John McMonigal. Oliart and McMonigal have combined for 16 of Pittsburgh’s 47 goals on the year. Mast and Hoffenkamp have combined for 17 assists through the two games.
“This Pittsburgh team is a really good team who had a bad record last year. They have one of the most efficient offenses in the entire league. I wouldn’t say they are hugely dissimilar from when we played them last year. Between that and watching them play over the last couple of weeks, we have a pretty good idea of what they want to do. The challenge is they are good at doing it, so it gets tough to stop it,” said head coach Jacob Spiro.
Breese Stevens will get rowdy. It will be loud and adrenaline will be pumping for the players. . It will be a matter of who can calm the nerves first and settle in. Mistakes will be made, and Madison will need to keep their heads in the game and battle back to get the disc if they want to keep Pittsburgh at bay.
With a win, the Radicals would build some much-needed confidence heading into the rest of the season. Make the trip down to historic Breese Stevens Field Saturday night at 6 p.m. CT for the Madison Radicals’ home opener of 2025.
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