Club Season Primer 2024: Women’s Division

The biggest stories entering the club season.

July 12, 2024 by Jenna Weiner, Zack Davis, Graham Gerhart, Kelsey Hayden, Anna Browne and Felicia Zheng 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, and way-too-early semis picks in the Club Women’s Division.

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

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Major Storylines

New Big 4 Era Incoming?

In the women’s division in 2023, for the first time in USAU club division history, all four semifinalists were former champions. Boston Brute Squad, San Francisco Fury, Washington DC Scandal, Denver Molly Brown — all had claimed national titles at least once before, with Molly Brown’s inaugural title coming most recently in 2022. With this somehow never-before-done-in-club¹ marker thrown down last year, it begs a natural question heading into this season: will it happen again?

The arguments for a new “Big 4” era are fairly straightforward. Since 2006, only five seasons have had fewer than three of the Brute Squad, Fury, Molly Brown, and Seattle Riot group that made up the previous “Big 4,” and with Scandal retaking that mantle after nearly a decade of missing the semifinals, it’s not much of a stretch to think that the past and future “Big 4″s will blend near seamlessly. Not only that, but do we really think that any teams are going to take a big enough step back to allow another team to step forward? Brute Squad somehow added even more top-level international talent² to their title-winning roster, Scandal still have two of the best American players in their primes leading the way in Claire Trop and Kami Groom, and Molly Brown continue to be led by the Cárdenas sisters, who just dominated the field as they led New York Gridlock to the PUL championship. As for Fury? Maybe they’ve taken a step back (more on that below), but please, it’s Fury. They haven’t missed the semifinal round for nearly two decades and aren’t likely to start now.

Where’s the case for a non-“Big 4” era on the horizon, then? Perhaps that there wasn’t one before. Looking at the past seven seasons, the Boston, San Francisco, and Denver trio made up three-quarters of the semifinal contingent each time but one — that being in 2019 when Oregon Schwa stunned Molly Brown on universe in quarters. Before that, outside of a predominantly “Big 4” run from 2015-2018, it was largely the Fury-Riot show with company ranging from Scandal and Brute Squad to the now-nonexistent Texas Showdown and Toronto Capitals. In more recent years, there’ve been the likes of Capitals’ successors Toronto 6ixers or the aforementioned divisional mainstays Schwa who have played their way into the semifinal scene, breaking up the “Big 4” narrative year after year. From that angle, then, a “Big 4” of the women division might have been something we all told ourselves was the story of the division rather than the reality of the situation, even as a handful of teams have still occupied most of the top few spots. And, coming into this season, with New York BENT, Raleigh Phoenix, Vancouver Traffic alongside Riot, 6ixers, and crew waiting in the wings once again, perhaps the “Big 4” of the women’s division were actually just the friends we made along the way.

– Jenna Weiner

Teams at the Crossroads

Sports are often defined by their eras, and eras are often defined by the teams, and those teams, in turn, are often defined by their star players. The Williams sisters in the 00s, Sue Bird on the Storm, Katie Ledecky now. There seems to be a handful of teams in the division that are at a point where they’re between defining moments, and the division itself seems to be in a similar space.

Nowhere is this crossroads better highlighted than the massive changes going on in the Bay Area. Fury, who at one point won six straight titles and seemed like perennial favorites for nearly two decades, only have a handful of players from the “dynasty era” of all those championships. This isn’t to say that the team has taken a nosedive – far from it – only that they’re in a different era. After defining the texture of the sport for so long, the change puts the power structure of the division in question. Do they have the institutional staying power to rebuild and come back even stronger and cement themselves as a tier above? Does anyone? Or is that a bygone era of ultimate and we’ve reached a level of parity in the division that will make that kind of dominance a thing of the past?

Further north, the 6ixers too are at a crossroads. It seemed the team was surging before COVID but have been sliding after their return in 2022. They look to be trying to find an identity through which to put all the pieces together. They have one of the most high-powered offenses in the division and some legitimate top-end individual talent in Britt Dos Santos and Sarah Jacobsohn, but they seem to be missing whatever chemical X the S-tier teams have. The 6ixers are at the point where they could define themselves as either consistent Nationals contenders or merely consistent Nationals qualifiers.

– Zack Davis

Is US Talent Not Enough Any More?

In the very cheesy but very memorable pilot episode of The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin wrote a very cheesy but very memorable line claiming the US is not the greatest country in the world anymore. You’ve probably seen it at some point. The show is a work of fiction, but if we’re honest with ourselves, maybe that’s starting to bear out in women’s ultimate.

Of the teams who made semis last year, only Scandal featured a roster without any international pickups (although Verena Woloson IS featured on Germany’s WUC roster). Scandal appear to be holding true to that this year, but if anything, the other teams have doubled down in 2024. Fury, Molly Brown, and especially Brute Squad all have rosters with international players who will undoubtedly play heavy minutes for their teams when it matters most. An argument can be made that not only are these pickups important to the success of these teams, it’s their presence that makes these rosters the presumptive favorites. Lest we forget, one of the rising programs in the power rankings for 2024 is BENT, another team with title aspirations that largely rest on the shoulders of their international players. It’s not even worth opening the can of worms that is Traffic and the 6ixers.³

It’s not simply enough that teams are adding international talent to their rosters; that’s happened for years now. The change is that these additions are now the focal points of their teams, rather than role players. Vale and Manu Cardenas are the driving force behind Molly Brown; Levke Walczak is the same for Boston; and Yina Cartagena is the center handler for a New York team trying to crack into the upper echelon. These players are locks for All-Club consideration and two of them have won the last two POTY awards in the US club scene! Is it time to admit US talent doesn’t hold the same stranglehold over women’s ultimate that it once had? Only time, and WUC, will tell.

– Graham Gerhart

Elite Express

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

• Cassie Brown (Nemesis → BENT)
• Genny De Jesus (XIST → BENT)
• Áine Gilheany (Dublin Gravity → Flipside)
• Emily Kemp (Grit →Brute Squad)
• Kennedy McCarthy (Squall → Molly Brown)
• Amanda Meroux (Polar Bears → Fury)
• Linda Morse (AMP → Parcha)
• Raha Mozaffari (AMP → Scandal)
• Claire Revere (Toro → Phoenix)
• Erynn Schroeder (Tabby Rosa → Heist)
• Lia Schwartz (Grit → Brute Squad)
• Blaise Sevier (Scandal → Molly Brown)

Tiered Powering Rankings

Tier 1 – The Contenders

Featuring every finalist since the pandemic and ten out of twelve of the semifinalists, this tier is almost guaranteed to dominate the division.

• Brute Squad
• Molly Brown
• Scandal
• Fury

Tier 2 – The Challengers

This group could easily walk away with a regular season TCT tournament victory and even a top seed in a Nationals pool, but their recent ability to win games on the biggest stage has yet to be proven.

• Traffic
• Phoenix
• BENT
• Flipside
• 6ixers

Tier 3 – Bracket Hopefuls

Peaking at the right time could be the difference between shaking up the bracket and making it to quarterfinals or missing the bracket entirely. This is still a competitive group, but they are unlikely to make it to semifinals in October.

• Riot
• Schwa
• Nemesis
• Parcha

Tier 4 – Dominant Regionals Teams

These squads are always strong within their region, dominating lower level competition but struggling against nearby Nationals-caliber squads. For those in multi-bid regions, they have to perform well to earn their own bid.

• Pop
• Nightlock
• Wildfire
• Grit
• Dark Sky

Tier 5 – Nationals Hopefuls

All it takes is a big regional upset for one of these squads to punch their ticket to San Diego. Or playing the algorithm game⁴ to claim an extra strength bid.

• Iris
• Starling
• Siege
• Ozone
• Rogue
• Small Batch
• Vengeance

– Anna Browne

Preseason Rankings

Bids Per Region

Great Lakes – Minimum: 1 / Maximum: 2

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1. both of the D-I divisions have accomplished this feat, with the men’s division doing so an incredible seven different times ↩

2. for a take on why that’s a good thing, actually, read Edward Stephens’ recent Clubhouse Chatter piece ↩

3. The joke is that they’re Canadian, so they’re all foreigners ↩

4. Like Raleigh-Durham United did last year ↩