After a successful regular season and regional tournament, Brown’s Ultimate Frisbee team Brownian Motion found themselves back in Madison, Wis. — the pinnacle of the season and home of USA Ultimate’s annual National Tournament, where the nation’s best twenty programs compete for a title.
Among the tournament’s twenty teams, BMo entered as the No. 8 seed. They left the tournament as four-time national champions.
Bracket play began at 8:00 a.m. Sunday, May 26, as BMo kicked things off with a first-round game against No. 20 Michigan, winning 15-12. Just two hours later, BMo played a quarterfinal game against No. 2 Georgia. Despite being the underdog, BMo narrowly ousted the nation’s second-best team 15-13. Later that afternoon, Brown played a third game — a semifinal matchup vs. No. 4 Colorado, against whom the Bears were also an underdog. Nevertheless, BMo prevailed, defeating Colorado 15-12 and landing a spot in the national championship.
“The biggest obstacle we faced was definitely the elements,” wrote BMo captain Caleb Moran ’25. “This tournament was incredibly rainy and windy. Our bracket play games on Sunday were all in wild conditions—super rainy and windy—and Monday’s championship game was quite windy.” Nevertheless, Moran expressed that BMo’s offensive style, which includes many short passes, is “better suited for such conditions than many other teams.”
For the national championship, BMo was also the underdog, as they faced fifth-seeded California Polytechnic State University, who go by “SLOCORE.” The game took place at Breese Stevens Field and was streamed on ESPNU. Despite a slow start, BMo quickly retained a lead and found themselves up at the half by a score of 8-5. BMo was able to sustain their energy and hold onto a lead, defeating Cal Poly-SLO 15-11 to win their fourth national championship in program history.
“Our key to victory was committing to a high level of discipline on offense,” Moran wrote. “We were willing to grind out scores, rejecting riskier passes in favor of the safe route. And we knew we could get them to turn the disc over if we forced them to throw many throws.”
In addition to the team’s win, BMo’s Jacques Nissen ’24 was named a finalist for the 2024 Callahan Award, which is given to the country’s best frisbee player and widely considered the sport’s most prestigious award
“Our success this season came from a variety of sources,” wrote Moran. “Adding two great assistant coaches, John Stout and Nate Taylor, implementing a distributed leadership structure that enabled more player ownership, dedicating more team resources to program culture and values, and consistently pushing the level of competition at practice.”
Cooper Herman is a senior staff writer covering sports and arts & culture. He is a sophomore from Alexandria, Virginia studying Economics and International and Public Affairs.
