The Columbus Sliders (Parris Todd, Lea Jansen, Andrei Daescu, CJ Klinger) closed out the 2025 MLP season with a 3-1 victory over the New Jersey 5s to claim the Premier level title.

The third match of the championship series began just like the other two, both of which went to DreamBreakers: Anna Leigh Waters/Meghan Dizon dominated women’s doubles for New Jersey, while Daescu/Klinger took men’s doubles for Columbus.

Mixed doubles is where things changed, however.

Even though the Sliders won the coin toss to be able to set the mixed doubles matchups for the first time in the series, they chose to keep them the same.

This pit Jansen/Klinger against Dizon/Noe Khlif for the third time in two days.

In their earlier match on Sunday, a controversial overturn of an out call at 10-10 in favor of New Jersey helped Dizon/Khlif come away with a 12-10 win. Jansen/Klinger used that earlier frustration to fuel their 11-4 Round 3 victory to tip the scales in favor of the Sliders.  

That result set up Todd/Daescu to close things out against Waters/Will Howells, a task they accomplished for the third time in a row to make the confetti rain down on Columbus.

Daescu, who dominated in the playoffs with a 14-2 doubles record, spoke to Pickleballtv’s Michelle McMahon immediately following the triumph. 

“The 5s are a great team full of great competitors, and we just took it to them and believed in ourselves. We kind of had a chip on our shoulder from the beginning of the playoffs, and these guys just showed up every single day,” he said. “It wasn’t just the players, either. It was our players on the bench (Marcela Hones and Ross Whittaker), our owners, our staff, our Columbus Sliders fans in the crowd. I know we played in New York City, but we really felt like we played in Columbus.”

“There’s a lot of work that goes into this,” he added in another interview with Ireland Horvat. “It’s a lot of days on the road, a lot of practice, a lot of days playing when you’re sore and a lot of sacrifice. To get this kind of title makes everything else worth it for us.”

This win caps a Sliders run that, at this point, is the most impressive postseason feat in the short history of Major League Pickleball. 

Columbus won series the top 3 teams from the regular season in the St. Louis Shock, Dallas Flash (2024 champions), and New Jersey 5s, all in the span of ten days.

Notably, both Dallas and St. Louis chose to play the Sliders over other potential opponents.

Todd says that being chosen only fueled the underdog mentality for the Sliders.

“We were the underdogs through and through this whole time,” she mentioned. “We kept getting chosen and knew that we had another giant to face every series. We just felt like it was David versus Goliath every time.”

Columbus, like David in the Bible, emerged victorious.

While this result brings celebration to Columbus, it marks heartbreak for New Jersey.

This is the second year in a row where the Waters-led 5s have had a 1-0 lead in the final before losing two straight matches to narrowly miss out on the title.

With an emotional weekend in the books, players will be right back on the PPA Tour schedule this week with the Walgreens Open at the Las Vegas Strip.