Club Season Primer 2024: Men’s Division

From major storylines to offseason shakeups to a potential new super team, we've got you covered for the club season.

July 12, 2024 by Patrick Stegemoeller, Matt Fazzalaro, Edward Stephens and Bix Weissberg in Preview with 0 comments

Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2024 club ultimate season is presented by Spin Ultimate; all opinions are those of the author(s). Find out how Spin can get you, and your team, looking your best this season.

Ahead of Pro Elite Challenge, the first stop on the Triple Crown Tour and first major event of the 2024 club season, we’ve got you covered on all the major storylines, players to watch, preseason rankings, and way-too-early semis picks in the Club Men’s Division.

Club Division 2024 Primers:   Men’s   |   Mixed   |   Women’s

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Major Storylines

Who Will Be Next to Write Their Name in the Stars?

We have been spoiled in the men’s division in the past decade. In specifically the last eight seasons we have seen a completely new champion crowned. From Ironside in 2016¹ to Truck Stop last year in 2023, the parity at the top of division proves to be one of the few constants in the game today. It is that same high level of parity that makes the men’s division anyone’s game. Every year elite teams start the season and think, “why not us?” Indeed, if the last decade has shown us anything, it could be anyone winning it all this year. Even you, dear reader.²

#1 Washington DC Truck Stop will be looking to do what no men’s division team has done in a long while and go back-to-back at Nationals. If this campaign is anything like their last – two pool play losses and a, shall we say, questionable quarterfinal win – Truck Stop are going to need to fight tooth and nail just to get back to the final. They have the talent and (unless something has changed drastically over the last few months) the drive. But that isn’t the way the frisbee gods do business. Clearly, they prefer something new – so let’s have another new champion in 2024.

Who will it be? Well there’s a storm a brewin’ in Boston (see below), a revenge tour about to get underway in Chicago, a chain of events unfolding in Atlanta, and a crash of Rhinos rumbling down from the Pacific Northwest. All that to say that once again this year’s club season appears to be as up for grabs as it’s always been, especially with the amount of turnover we’ve seen amongst the top teams.

Elite clubs have been exchanging top players like Pokémon cards at the elementary school lunch table. The decks have been shuffled. The table has been laid. Game on.

– Matt Fazzalaro

Are DiG the New Super Team?

I’m not a licensed meteorologist or anything, but I can read the signs – the high pressure front coming in, strange cloud portents, dew point all over the place, trade winds hollering. There’s a supercell forming over Boston, and it could be a big one. Er, better make that super team.

On the heels of an acrimonious quarterfinal exit at Nationals, #4 Boston DiG have made a statement of intent with their roster moves in the offseason: just try ripping a title away from us this year. The additions come in all flavors: young college star with the legs to be a demon on the D-line, dominant All-Club talents, legendary vet with championship winning experience, international pickup with a continent’s worth of hype behind him. All of it added to a core that was already at the level of the best teams last season.

No Boston men’s team has made semis since Ironside finally won their title in 2016 (somewhat ironically after a decade spanning string of trophyless semifinal appearances), but DiG have put together the talent to get Boston back to the top.

Will they though? Just look to the team whose “super team” mantle they’re supplanting, Northeast rivals PoNY. PoNY won the title in 2018 by adding peak Jimmy Mickle to an already growing core (people forget that Kocher, Jagt, Little, and Keegan were already on the team before Mickle arrived), but then came up short in the ensuing years despite doubling and tripling down on their superteam status.

There are definitely some questions for Boston to answer this season. With Mac Hecht and Leo Gordon leaving, there isn’t a clear O-line that makes immediate sense despite all of the bonafides on the roster. O-lines can take a couple years to build and coalesce, like last year’s champs Truck Stop, who won their title by slowly adding pieces to a core, building upon an identity. And speaking of Truck Stop, it’s an open question how much of an impact Rowan McDonnell will have in Boston after leaving a team he was so instrumental in building, one that perfectly complemented his strengths and minimized his weaknesses.

DiG were the darlings of 2023, overarching a bit and suffering a public injustice that endeared them to the world. Now they are something else, supercharged and full of potential that can glow up or blow up. Get ready to batten down the hatches, storm’s a comin’.

– Patrick Stegemoeller

Legacies Rebuilt and Rebuilding

We don’t use the word “ignominious” enough in frisbee writing. That’s a failing I’ll try to rectify now in looking back on the last few seasons by a few of the division’s great-uncle programs. Toronto GOAT (est. 2004) flamed out from their expected Nationals position despite a lineup featuring many of Canada’s best players. Minneapolis Sub Zero (est. 1998) barely crawled through a North Central minefield to return to the tournament after a year away. And Seattle Sockeye (est. 1993) gave away their long standing seat at the table to a program – Eugene Dark Star (est. 1978) – with a longer standing tradition of not even going to the same restaurant. For teams with that kind of history in the sport coming from cities that have spent decades as frisbee hotbeds, these recent poor performances are the definition of ignominy.

And yet: all three are poised for a resurgence as soon as this year. Sub Zero showed signs of it last season after a bad miss in 2022. The herky-jerky 2023 summer saw them enter North Central Regionals – historically just a tune-up for them – as the fifth-seed and drop a pool play game to crosstown upstart rivals Minneapolis Mallard before coming alive in the Sunday bracket and avenging the loss.³ They’re trending up again largely due to investing wholeheartedly in a younger generation of players all at once – very much in the mold of a pro sports rebuild. Their stars (2024 D-III Player of the Year Will Brandt, Eric Crosby Lehmann, 2024 D-I Offensive Player of the Year Paul Krenik) are still improving as players and could be in line for a (figurative) group growth spurt as they march back toward San Diego.

Sockeye are clearly following the same plan – and one might argue they’re going even younger. Small wonder, though, considering the brimming talent of the local youth scene. One of their “established” stars, Jack Brown, just finished playing college ultimate. Another handful (Declan Miller, Daniel Chen, Max Gade, Tucker Kalmus) are coming off impressive campaigns in the midst of their careers. And the Hineses, Ocean and Cedar, have yet to begin. They have pushed their chips in that direction in a big way, and it is shaping up to be a major bounceback season for the four-time national champs.

GOAT haven’t quite gone all-in on youth: notably, several of the best college-age players in Ontario are playing for Ottawa Phoenix this season.⁴ But they have a pair with star potential in Oscar Stonehouse and James McClean. If the old guard (Andrew Carroll, Geoff Powell, Andy Ouchterlony, Isaiah Masek-Kelly, Remi Ojo) can incorporate them quickly and well, it could mean we see Toronto reaching toward the division’s summit again in the coming years rather than scrambling to hold on to the edge of the mountain.

-Edward Stephens

Elite Express

A quick glance at some of the division’s impact transfers.

• Raekwon Adkins (Zyzzyva → Revolver)
• Jeff Babbitt (PoNY → DiG)
• Tobias Brooks (RDU → Bravo)
• Dexter Clyburn (Zyzzyva → Revolver)
• Liam Haberfield (Chain Lightning → PoNY)
• Mac Hecht (DiG → Revolver)
• Henry Ing – (AMP → Rhino Slam!)
• Grant Lindsley (PoNY → Bravo)
• Rowan McDonnell (Truck Stop → DiG)
• Ryan Osgar ( PoNY → Mallard )
• Matt Rehder (Ring of Fire → Rhino Slam!)
• Calvin Stoughton (Johnny Bravo → DiG)

Tiered Power Rankings

Tier 1 – Championship or Bust

Truck Stop’s title window is still open, for now, and Machine have everything they need to finally win the whole thing.

• Truck Stop
• Machine

Tier 2 – Title Talent, Some Questions

You can easily see a world where they win a championship. You also can see a world where they are losing in quarters while some dude from Chain is dancing on their grave and calling them soft.

• Johnny Bravo
• DiG

Tier 3 – A Little Young, A Little Old

Plenty of talent, but maybe not enough of it in its prime. A lot to like, but hard not to see some holes.  The last gasp of the NexGen era and college kids who don’t even know what I’m talking about.

• Revolver
• Rhino Slam!
• Ring of Fire
• PoNY
• Chain Lightning

Tier 4 – Something to Lose

The potential for volatility in this group, but most of it pointing down. By and large, these teams seem more likely to slip up and maybe miss Nationals than make a run through the bracket.

• Furious George
• Sockeye
• Doublewide
• RDU
• Sub Zero

Tier 5 – Bid Bubble Boys™

If your team is in this zone, consider keeping Cody Mills on retainer to crunch some numbers for you throughout the season. Your fate will likely be determined by the point differential of a 9th place bracket semifinal.

• Vault
• Blueprint
• GOAT
• Dark Star
• Condors

Tier 6 – “Let’s Just Be Legends.”

Probably not going to earn their own bid, but could achieve real greatness by stealing one at Regionals.

• Mallard
• Mad Men
• Garden State
• Zyzzyva
• General Strike
• Beacon

– Patrick Stegemoeller

Preseason Rankings

Bid Range Per Region

Great Lakes – Minimum: 1 / Maximum: 2

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1. Author’s note: Boy does that feel like a long time ago. ↩

2. Editor’s note: probably not though. ↩

3. Mallard, by the way, won’t be stepping aside at all in 2024 – but that’s a different story. ↩

4. Yes, Ottawa is closer to Montreal, but the point stands. ↩