Fast Takes with Fast Break: Detroit Innovators
Author: D. F. Banas Jr.
PC: MLQ
“Innovation at its Finest:” the 2024 Detroit Innovators
Last season: The 2023 season was one of great promise and hope for the Detroit Innovators. Fresh with collegiate talent—University of Michigan’s Final Four run and Michigan State’s D2 semifinal run—and with a small sprinkling of seasoned club players, the Innovators showed signs of team growth. While the growth was evident in individual players’ performances, this development unfortunately did not translate to success on the pitch with the Innovators dropping their opening series on the road against the Minneapolis Monarchs in 0-3 fashion with games one and two being knotted up at 70 all going into Flag Runner on Pitch (FROP) before a perfunctory game three blowout. Due to last season's split North Division, last on the docket for the Innovators was a home series against the Chicago Prowl resulting in an 0-3 loss with a Luc Marklin flag catch in game three giving the Innovators some semblance of parity against the Windy City side. The Innovators went 4-1 at North Champs, beating both the Cleveland Riff and the now sadly defunct Rochester Whiteout to qualify for MLQ Champs for the first time under head coach Kaegan Maddelein. At MLQ Champs, the team dropped both games to their opponents, with Josh Mansfield and Alex Pucciarelli twirling a gem against the Motor City side before the beefy Kansas City Stampede comfortably crushed Cogsworth and company.
Returning Players:
David Banas Jr. (NY Slice)
Rei Brodeur (University of Michigan)
Robert Butler (Boom Train)
Brian Flahie (Michigan State)
Ryan Hsu (Boom Train)
Jack Levy (Skyline)
Nick Love (University of Michigan)
Kaegan Maddelein (Detroit Demons)
Amanda Margolis (University of Michigan)
Luc Marklin (Michigan State)
Sarah Maxey (Detroit Demons)
Dustin Minnick (Detroit Demons)
Gwen Pratt (Michigan State)
Lyndsey Smeyers (Detroit Demons)
Brooke Smiley (BosNy)
Ryan Swanson (Detroit Demons)
Julien Theuerkauf (University of Michigan)
Ethan Wanous (Detroit Demons)
New Players:
Leo Fried (Harvard, played for the Innovators in 2021)
Ryder Fried (unaffiliated)
Ashton Glenn (University of Michigan)
Riley Hodder (University of Michigan, played for the Innovators in 2022)
Renee Johnston (University of Michigan)
Katlyn Knudsen (Detroit Demons, practice squad in 2023)
Jackson Massey (Michigan State)
Sarah Multer (University of Michigan)
Neil Peterson (University of Michigan, played for the Innovators in 2022)
Brady Sowers (Michigan State, practice squad in 2023)
Jenny Sun (University of Michigan, practice squad in 2023)
Maksim Sviridov (University of Michigan)
Breakdown:
College: 17
University of Michigan: 11
Michigan State: 5
Harvard: 1
Club: 12
Detroit Demons: 7
Boom Train: 2
BosNy: 1
NY Slice: 1
Skyline: 1
Unaffiliated: 1
Notable Losses:
Rick Wasser
Dave Wier
Marisa Wier
The Season Ahead: the Innovators open their season on the road against the Chicago Prowl on June 1. The task of getting 30 players from eight different programs all in sync within a month’s time is a tall order, one made all the more difficult against Prowl who made it into the MLQ Finals last season. While facing the reigning North Division Champs as the first series is an admittedly rough task, there is one silver lining. The Innovators will have a chance to largely be a strategic question mark, something that has always benefited the underdog.
After the Prowl series, the Innovators are back in action on June 29 against the Toronto Raiders, the only North Division franchise that the Innovators have not beaten. No matter the result of the previous Prowl series, this is a must-win series for the Innovators for their Championship qualifying aspirations.
Three weeks later on July 20, the Innovators will host the North Division SuperSeries against the Minneapolis Monarchs and the Cleveland Riff. This SuperSeries should be an interesting test of the team as it will feature a team that the Innovators must beat in the Riff and a team that the Innovators will need to beat in the Monarchs to prove that this season is not just a competitive wash/yet another growing season.
Season Potentials:
At a minimum, the Innovators must beat the Riff, if for nothing else than qualifying for MLQ Champs. Even with Cleveland’s limited roster featuring pickups from the defunct Whiteout, anything less than a 3-0 sweep of the Riff will be a step back for the team, especially with how talent-laden the Innovators are.
The results of the Toronto series should tell viewers all they need to know about the rest of the Innovators’ season. A win over the Raiders would not only boost team spirits, but also increase the prospects of beating the Monarchs in the ensuing SuperSeries three weeks later. A loss would leave many on the team, and the quadball community as a whole, scratching their heads and wondering where it all went wrong.
Why they Will: This is the most talented and experienced Innovators roster ever assembled in franchise history, rivaling even the 2018 iteration of the team that went to a quarterfinals game three against the perennial contender New York Titans. With one USNT and three USNTDA players, the upper echelon of the Detroit side can hang with any team in the league.
Besides his chasing prowess, Leo Fried brings an asset that the Innovators have woefully lacked throughout their existence: a bona fide seeker. When Fried donned the Innovator teal last in 2021, the Innovators had their best flag catching regular season record with four catches in nine opportunities. With the addition of Neil Peterson from the University of Michigan, the Innovators have strengthened their historic weakness. Given the rotating door that has been the Innovators seeking corps for almost their whole existence—particularly, last season where they went a woeful two for thirteen including two games at MLQ Champs—Fried and Peterson not only stabilize the position, but also make it an asset.
Head coach Kaegan Maddelein is in his third year at the wheel of the Innovators and is now prepared to fully compete with the last two seasons largely being growing seasons for the local college talent and an opportunity to buy into his system of play. All that will come to fruition this summer. Alongside Fried in the chasing game is a healthy Julien Theuerkauf who missed North Champs and MLQ Champs last season because of nagging injuries sustained in the University of Michigan’s Final Four run at the Valley Forge USQ Nationals.
Besides the collegiate and club returners, there are the talented additions of rookie Brady Sowers from Michigan State and the aforementioned Peterson, returning to the team for the first time since the 2022 season. Alongside this new talent is the addition of Ethan Wanous, Jack Levy, Ryan Hsu, and Rei Brodeur to the coaching staff of the Innovators. All four were pivotal players and tactical minds on their teams this past USQ season—even more so the latter three when they were teammates during UM’s Final Four run—and their addition is a strategic breath of fresh air to the old guard Innovators coaching staff.
Why they Won’t: Despite nearly two thirds of the roster returning and having various members of top USQ teams, the team is hard pressed to find success at the MLQ level. Indeed, of the 30 athletes on this year’s roster, only one has ever scored victories against a North division rival not named Cleveland.[1] Furthermore, only one innovator on the entire roster has won games at MLQ Champs, the most crucial of proving grounds for a team.
The franchise has a history of stumbling in key moments over the past few seasons, such as getting swept by Toronto at the 2022 North Champs which cost them a spot at MLQ Champs for the first time in franchise history; being a combined 0-12 against Minneapolis and Chicago the past two seasons; dropping a game to Cleveland for the first time in six seasons (more on that below); or even blowing their opening game at MLQ Champs 2023 to a shorthanded NOLA Curse, a game which featured a 50-0 run by the Innovators to make it 60-30 at the 10:55 mark that ultimately ended in a 100-140 loss to the Ben Mertens coached side.
While Maddelein has acknowledged in the past that his model has always been one of growth with prioritizing giving developing players more playtime than necessarily winning games, changing approaches isn’t always as easy as flipping a switch. To that end, Maddelein’s in-game track record at the wheel of the Innovators raises more than a few eyebrows. Of his six games against Chicago, he has the top three worst results ever (four out of the top five in the set score era) with a sample size of 24. Against Maddelein’s Detroit, Chicago averaged an impressive 17.67 goals per game against the Motor City side, including a 230-80 win that featured a 60-0 run by Chicago in a span of a mere 3:57 of game time. Maddelein’s mark of allowing 17.67 goals per game against Chicago is worse than any other North division franchise’s entire historical average against Chicago—even perennial basement dweller Cleveland— and the worst of any North Division head coach in the entire history of the league except Toronto’s Michael Howard. Of the top seven worst losses to the Monarchs, three of those have come under Maddelein’s tenure of six games (sample size 12 games). Maddelein also has the worst loss to Toronto (sample size 5). Furthermore, Maddelein is the first Innovators head coach since 2016 to drop a game to the Cleveland Riff in the Toledo Derby, breaking an unbeaten streak of 15 games and a situation that forced the heavily favored Innovators into back-to-back elimination games on day one of North Champs. Indeed, even with his time with the Ohio Apollos and Detroit Demons during past USQ seasons, Maddelein has yet to post a winning record in either USQ or MLQ since he played for Deutscher Quadballbund’s Münchner Wolpertinger.
While the talent in the beater corps is undeniable, beater depth drops off precipitously after the first six beaters and even for how rightfully vaunted Brodeur and Hsu are, they have yet to win an MLQ game where Banas has not played—losses of 175-50 against Minneapolis; 180-90, 230-80, and 160-125 against Chicago; 140-100 to New Orleans; and 210-90 against Kansas City—which is a testament not to his talent but rather the existence of a shallow Innovators beating corps. Combine that with the absence of veterans Marisa and Dave Wier—particularly the former after their USQ club championship with Boom Train—and the switch of graduated UM standout Robert Butler from beater to keeper, the Innovators beating corps is one serious injury or series absence away from peril.
Series Preview vs Prowl:
Before this series’ roster reveal, certainly the biggest question facing the Chicago Prowl was who was going to step up to fill the sizable hole left by USNT beater Matt Brown. Largely, that question has been answered with the return of newly minted USQ Club National Champion Tad Walters from injury, although his penchant for picking up contact cards is something Head Coach Kennedy Murphy will have to balance. Realistically, the larger absence left in the Prowl beating corps is that of the excellent Dany Yaacoub who is also taking the summer off. Turning attention back to the series roster, Prowl’s beating corps for this series is as good as it gets for them this summer, save for Veronica Hoffman’s absence. The most troubling absences on the series’ roster lie not in the beating game, however, but rather in the chasing corps which is bereft of Ryley Andrews, Darian Murcek-Ellis, Ally Manzella, and Ben Peachey. The loss of any one of these players is a tough pill to swallow and the loss of all four is sure to cause the Prowl leadership to hack up a few hairballs, but the show goes on. For the Innovators, they bring the most complete roster in franchise history barring MLQ Champs in 2018, although, as discussed earlier, the lack of beater depth could prove decisive with Detroit rostering six beaters to Chicago’s eight. Despite all the talk about chasers and beaters on both sides, this series will be a nailbiter that comes down to who catches. Chicago Prowl practice squad player and series flag runner Mat Isanove who had a strong showing at MLQ Champs last year has his work cut out for him with Prowl potentially sending out Liam Zach III, Nojus Ausra, or Matt Melton, the latter of whom is experiencing a bit of renaissance, returning to a level of seeking excellence not seen since he donned the memorable Lake Erie Elite pink tank top. For the Innovators, expect Fried or Peterson to get the start with potential subs being Ethan Wanous and Luc Marklin. In a close game—which all three games are shaping up to be—the 35 points from a flag catch is a huge advantage.
[1] I don’t count Rochester because they’re now defunct
