Plus, college ultimate enters the heart of the spring season.
February 28, 2022 by Steve Sullivan in News with 0 comments
Opening Pull is Ultiworld’s weekly wrap-up of the previous week in ultimate, available both here on the site and as an email newsletter. We’ve gathered the news you need to know and highlights you need to see. Check back weekly or subscribe now to receive Opening Pull in your inbox along with a rundown of the previous week’s content on Ultiworld.
USAU Releases 2022 College Guidelines, Including Bid Allocations
After multiple updates earlier this year, USA Ultimate has finally released the official guidelines for the spring 2022 college season.
The guidelines lay out the process for determining bids from Conferences to Regionals (strictly size bids) and Regionals to Nationals (a combination of strength and size bids), many of which have already been determined based on results from previous seasons. In addition, seeding at the championship events this spring will once again follow the rule that “no team that finishes ahead of another team at Regionals may be seeded behind that team at Nationals.”
Camille Goo and Hunter Lang Win 2021 Donovan Awards
Puget Sound’s Camille Goo and Richmond’s Hunter Lang were announced as the winners of the 2021 Donovan Award winners last week in ceremonies that streamed live on Ultiworld’s Youtube channel.
You can watch replays of the women’s and men’s 2021 Donovan Award presentations on Ultiworld’s Youtube channel.
USAU Hosts First World Games Tryout
Over this past weekend, USA Ultimate hosted the first of two tryout weekends to build the team that will represent the country at the 2022 World Games. Seventy-four athletes met in Austin, TX to compete for an opportunity to move forward to the next step in the process. Seattle Mixtape’s Khalif El-Salaam posted a series of videos to his Instagram story documenting his experience over the weekend, providing an inside look at what the tryouts were like.
Stay tuned for additional coverage of the tryouts from Ultiworld later this week.
AUDL Announces 2022 Schedule
The American Ultimate Disc League has announced its 2022 schedule. Over 14 weeks between Friday, April 29th and Sunday, July 31st, each of the league’s 25 teams will play a 12-game slate with 11 playoff spots up for grabs; Championship Weekend will be held in Madison, Wisconsin on August 26th and 27th. The league is back to four divisions after altering the landscape in the pandemic-affected 2021 season, welcoming three new franchises to the league’s West division as well as reinstituting a series of interdivisional games.
PUL, Milwaukee Monarchs Face Questions Following Player Suspension
After a former Monarchs player was suspended by USA Ultimate due to sexual misconduct violations, both the semi-pro league and franchise faced questions from their players and fans over why the player was still being considered for a spot on the 2022 roster. Ultiworld editor Mags Colvett spoke to many people involved in the story to understand the gaps in policies and procedures for handling sexual misconduct and player safety issues within the league and its teams. You can read the full story here or hear Colvett discuss the situation on last week’s Deep Look podcast.
College Spring Regular Season in Full Swing
After slowly easing into the first two months of 2022, the college regular season picked up speed this past weekend with eight sanctioned events providing playing opportunities for teams across the country. In the weekend’s marquee tournaments, the #1 North Carolina Pleiades continued their dominant run with an undefeated performance at Commonwealth Cup while on the men’s side, #15 Vermont Chill followed up their surprising Queen City Tune-Up with a convincing tournament victory at Easterns Qualifier in Little River, SC.
Coming Up
- Our reader-voted Play of the Year brackets march on with the finale of the Catch of the Year up now, Throw of the Year underway, and Block of the Year coming soon! Weigh in on your favorites and see which win!
- It’s one of the biggest weeks of the college regular season as top Women’s teams meet for the third leg of the unofficial Southwest Triple Crown at Stanford Invite while many of the top Men’s teams in the country clash at Smoky Mountain Invite. Plus, the D-III division kicks off its season in earnest at the FCS D-III Tune Up — stay tuned to Ultiworld for preseason D-III coverage later this week!
