The New Jersey 5s and Columbus Sliders will face off in a best-of-three series to determine who takes home the 2025 Premier level championship, starting with their first match on Saturday.

These teams played against each other in their respective first matches of the season back in April at MLP Orlando, with the 5s winning 3-1. 

Let’s take a closer look at each team.

New Jersey: Anna Leigh Waters, Meghan Dizon, Mari Humberg, Will Howells, Noe Khlif, Zane Navratil

For the second year in a row, the 5s are in the Premier level championship. They fell to the Dallas Flash in last year’s final, so they will be looking for a different result this year in Central Park. They beat both the Texas Ranchers and Los Angeles Mad Drops 2-0 to make the championship.

One big question mark coming into this season for New Jersey was how Anna Leigh Waters and Meghan Dizon would play together. There were some losses at the beginning of the campaign, and even a brief return to the starting lineup for Mari Humberg during the Mid-Season Tournament, but Waters/Dizon have certainly found their groove together and are on a 20-match winning streak.

“I feel like we’re just gelling,” Dizon said of her and Waters’ recent performances. “We know what the other is gonna do, and that’s really been helping us towards the end of the season.”

On the men’s side, New Jersey turned heads when they traded for Noe Khlif to replace team captain Zane Navratil in the starting lineup in July. The move has paid off handsomely in the postseason, where Khlif/Howells are 4-0 against the likes of Christian Alshon/Eric Oncins and Ben Johns/Hunter Johnson. This pairing will need to continue to be sharp as the 5s eye a title. 

Columbus: Parris Todd, Lea Jansen, Marcela Hones, Andrei Daescu, CJ Klinger, Ross Whittaker

The Sliders have undergone a massive turnaround in 2025 after finishing 11th out of 12 teams in 2024.

They have been competing with a chip on their shoulder this entire postseason after both the Dallas Flash and St. Louis Shock chose to play them (and paid the price for doing so) and have all the momentum in the world coming into the finals. 

Andrei Daescu/CJ Klinger have been on an absolute tear in the playoffs so far, boasting a 5-0 men’s doubles record in their games against Dallas and St. Louis. They have won a PPA Tour title together and are certainly peaking at the right time in MLP.

In women’s doubles, Parris Todd/Lea Jansen have found some big wins down the stretch, notably taking down the Flash’s Jorja Johnson/Tyra Black and the Shock’s Anna Bright/Kate Fahey in the postseason. They make up a particularly fluid pairing, with both players being able to play both sides. Recently, they’ve started with Todd on the left side, but they can just as easily defer to who has the hot hand in a given moment.

Columbus is also the most DreamBreaker-tested of the remaining teams. All three of their matches with Dallas and one of their two matches against St. Louis required the singles tiebreak, so they should have no shortage of confidence if any matches get to that point.

The Sliders have two top 6-ranked women’s singles players in Todd (4) and Jansen (6), but Daescu and Klinger–neither of whom plays singles regularly on the PPA Tour–have shown that they have the goods in singles, too.

The Sliders have fully embraced the underdog mentality this postseason and are two wins away from pulling off the most impressive one-season rebuild in MLP history.

Catch the first match of this championship series at noon ET on CBS National.