Chicago Prowl Season Preview: Clawing to the Top

Author: Ashton Butler

Last Season:

After two straight finals appearances, the Chicago Prowl nearly climbed the mountain top once again but fell just short to the New York Titans. The Prowl had a fierce trek to the finals, sustaining injuries during the day at MLQ Championships. While it may seem difficult to look at the season and find disappointment from not being able to finish the season with a championship, the success over the past two seasons under head coach Kennedy Murphy has been quite the journey. Since the move to Chicago, the team has won 20 of their 21 regular season matches. Their successes don’t end at Champs — their paths to the final left them nearly unscathed with just one loss prior to the final in either season. The question now is: how do the Prowl make it to the top of the mountain and finish the job? The Prowl brings back a long list of battle tested members of their pride and brings in a new litter of youth to the fold. Will this finally be Chicago’s year?

Returning Prowl Members:

Allyson Manzella (Boom Train)

Benjamin Peachey (Boom Train)

Caleb Williams (Chaos)

Camila Rodriguez (Illini Ridgebacks)

Darian Murcek-Ellis (Warriors)

George Blackwell III (Chaos)

Jim Richert (Boom Train)

Kailey Fugate (Boom Train)

Kennedy Murphy (Boom Train)

Liam Zach III (Boom Train)

Matt Melton (Boom Train)

Matthew Troy (Chicago United)

Melanie Rolfe (Boom Train)

Michael Mrowiec (Boom Train)

Nathan Digmann (Boom Train)

Nojus Ausra (Boom Train)

Ryley Andrews (Boom Train)

Tad Walters (Boom Train)

Team Additions:

Amelia Winke (Brew Cities)

Anna Holmes (Boom Train)

Ariana Zhang (Illini Ridgebacks)

Justin Cole (BosNyan Bearsharks)

Leah Osborne (Purdue)

Mae Overholt (Boom Train)

Marcos Sandoval (Illini Ridgebacks)

Matthew Brown (Boom Train)

Nadja Melby (Boom Train)

Nevin O’Donnell (Chicago United)

Spencer Reisig (Brew Cities)

Sohum Sharma (Illini Ridgebacks)

Player Breakdown:

Club Players: 25

Boom Train: 17

Chicago United: 2

Chaos: 2

Brew Cities: 2

BosNyan Bearsharks: 1

College Players: 5

Illini Ridgebacks: 4

Purdue: 1

Departures:

Annie Petrelli

Aniyah Dillard

Byron Ng

Dara Gaeuman

Emma Vasquez

Grant Himmelmann

Harold Advincula

Maverick Wolf

Milly Hunter

Nivash Jayaram

Ojas Turekar

Veronica Hoffman

Roster Talk:

The Prowl are entering a season with an optimistic look on their roster. Chicago was able to add USNT-level-talent with Matt Brown returning to the roster after taking last summer off. Perhaps the biggest shock is the return of Justin Cole to the MLQ landscape after being a big time player for the Washington Admirals for multiple seasons. Cole will add to the list of tall chasers that can land a hit, making their defense significantly harder to score on. Mae Overholt and Nadja Melby both come over after impressive seasons with Boom Train. Melby has been with Boom Train for multiple seasons, including their USQ Cup Championship in 2024. Melby is a very smart beater that utilizes control of the dodgeball effectively with a strong pump fake and great awareness and accuracy. Overholt adds more intelligence to their chaser core as a taller chaser and a strong mark defender who is great at off ball movement. However, you can’t sleep when she gets the ball in her hands as she is quick and has great mobility around hoops. 

The Season Ahead:

The Prowl open up their season in Cleveland on June 21st. The Cleveland Riff comes into this season with a big boost to their roster as they will have a full 30 person roster. Despite the upgrades, Chicago should rock this team and roll through the Riff. The Prowl will then go nearly a month before getting their paws on the wheel and heading to Detroit. The Innovators gave the Prowl their one and only regular season loss last season, and Chicago will be looking to take their revenge here. This Detroit team lost their top scorer of last year, Leo Fried, who was in the top 3 in goals, assists, and stops a year ago, and he scored 4 goals in Detroit’s victory against Chicago. Without Fried and the taste of revenge for the Prowl, they should leave this series with their 6th win. The Prowl then conclude their season in a SuperSeries against the Minneapolis Monarchs and the Toronto Raiders. While the expectation is for Chicago to sweep Toronto as the Raiders have never taken a single game off of Chicago in their team’s history, since the 2019 season, Chicago/Indianapolis or Minneapolis have won the North Division in each season played. To wrap the season with a tough matchup will be the biggest difference maker as their final matchup going into championship weekend, and it could determine how their MLQ Championship weekend goes. 

Why They Won’t:

While there is no question that this team has what it takes to make another deep run into day 2 of MLQ Championships, the question for this team is who is going to step into the roles of the major contributors that were lost in the offseason?

This Chicago Prowl team has been known to be a 30-deep team. They are a team that had 15 different players with 5 or more goals last season, and they really thrive when using their full team as Chicago had 5 different players with 11 or more assists, second in the league. Going into this season, they will struggle to replace some of the depth, passing options, and ball handling skills from veterans lost. The highlight of this category is Team USA chaser Emma Vasquez. The casual fan would look at her previous season and downplay it due to her statistics; however, Vasquez made a major difference for this team with her pesky perimeter defense and her ability to move the ball on offense both with her arm and her legs. They also lose other key chasers such as Nivash Jayaram, Grant Himmelman, Dara Gaeuman and Byron Ng, who together amounted 38 of the teams Quadball goals in 2024. This team will be looking to recover those points from chasers who will need to step up and fill in the roles. However, we saw what this Prowl team looked like at the end of day 2, and that was gassed. The team saw numerous injuries to multiple key players at different points of their final series against the New York Titans, including USNT chaser Darian Murcek-Ellis and star beater/seeker Nojus Ausra. The hurdle this Prowl team faces without much of the depth they had prior to this season is to look internally to see who will step up when the moment calls for it in order to keep their key players on the pitch when it matters most. 

Why They Will:

Despite the heartbreaking losses in back-to-back final series, the Prowl have been able to maintain one thing through it all: their elite coaching. Kennedy Murphy returns at the helm of the Prowl for her third season as head coach. Murphy has proven time and time again that she’s a top mind in this league and has a knack for developing young talent into stars and putting developed stars in situations to succeed. From 2023 to 2024, Benjamin Peachey saw an increase of 7 goals and 13 assists, Matt Melton saw a leap of 13 goals and 5 assists, and Ally Manzella took a leap to the National Team. This offense is built to help people succeed and has done a great job in putting players in positions to be successful, even if they may not be the primary scorer when on the pitch. Murcek-Ellis makes his return for his third season on the Prowl after capping off his first USQ Cup victory with The Warriors. Murcek-Ellis is an athletic unicorn of a player in that he will either go around someone or over them, and they have no choice as to which one. Murcek-Ellis only played in 6 games for the Prowl in their regular season last year, but if that number goes up at all, the North division is in a world of hurt when number 14 is in town. Production prior to an MLQ season has never been a problem for Murphy’s offense, and major contributions are coming from some of the veterans looking to push the team forwards. Of course, the sheriff-in-town Nathan Digmann who was one of three players to have a 30/20/20 season, will bring offensive power to the pride. But with new opportunities opening for minutes and touches on offense, it will be exciting to see which new faces step up. Look for a big season from George Blackwell III on this team. Blackwell III is coming off of a strong season chasing for Chaos Quadball Club. He is very smart as a ball carrier and is a great passer when he commands the offense, but he is also a sneaky off-ball chaser with a strong shot. While putting the ball in the hoop is the main objective, the ability to move and pass into space and find the open player or scoring opportunity is a vital part of how this Prowl team scores. This unselfish nature of play is fed by the coaching staff and passing ability of players such as Murphy, Peachey, Manzella and Digmann, which make them major threats in more than one way. 

Offensively, this team is good, but defensively this team is great. The personnel really allows the Prowl to thrive on defense because of their tall keepers in front  and their equally-as-tall chasers behind them on the hoops making shooting difficult. Prowl typically runs a 2-2 defense in which their top chaser engages into a pesky back and forth with the other team’s ball carrier and forces the other team to react either by moving the ball or beating out this chaser. While the chaser up top may not get a ton of individual stops, it creates a great window for the other players on defense, especially the beating core, to attack the opponent and force them into making a mistake. This chaser last year was often a combination of Murphy, Vasquez, and Gaeuman, and with two of those three players gone, a veteran of the Prowl, Melanie Rolfe will need to step into those shoes and play big minutes for this team. Another key contributor to this defense that definitely gets overlooked is Kailey Fugate. Fugate is one of the stronger hoop defenders in Chicago, and she has proven time and time again how difficult it is to score on her hoop. She also has a quick first step to come off her hoop to guard a chaser. Defensively, they will definitely improve down the middle as USNT beater Matt Brown returns for the Prowl after not playing with the team last summer. Brown is a force that simply does everything well as a beater, and he allows his chasers to have the confidence to make plays on defense knowing that he is behind them to disrupt the play if something goes wrong. Rejoining Brown this summer will be key contributors in the beating core, including Nojus Ausra and Caleb Williams. Ausra is a sniper of a beater with great accuracy and is a tough beater to deal with when they are around hoops. Williams, on the other hand, is very fast and aggressive, and is a strong tackler and off-ball beater that will take you off your feet if you allow them the space. If all of this isn’t enough, the hard hitting of players such as Liam Zach III, Digmann, and Matthew Troy will make opposing chasers think again before driving on this defense. 

Overall, this team is a very complete team that plays with passion for the name on the front of their jerseys. The team takes pride in the people who share the pitch with them, and they are not the team that anyone wants to see on any given Saturday. The Prowl is ready to pounce on their prey this season, and they have all the tools needed at chaser, beater, and seeker to be an elite team and finally take their place at the top of MLQ Championships.