All the ins and outs of the best tournament of the year.
October 15, 2024 by Edward Stephens in News 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.
For those who are already deeply invested in the world of ultimate frisbee, the biggest event on the calendar is Club Nationals. Newer fans and players, however, may be asking themselves what the hubbub is all about. Here, then, is a brief overview of the scope and stakes of the tournament, its history, and how best to enjoy it.
What is Club Nationals?
The annual USA Ultimate Club Championships – known colloquially as ‘Club Nationals’ or simply ‘Nationals’ – is the four-day capstone event for North American club ultimate. Many consider it the pinnacle of the sport. It exceeds Worlds for depth of high-level competition, and players are often (though not all players, and not always) more committed to their club seasons than their semi-pro seasons. The result is the ultimate test of skill, determination, teamwork.
The first day of the tournament (Thursday) features a round robin pool play format. The winners of each pool earn a bye into the quarterfinal round of the elimination bracket. The fourth-place pool finishers miss the bracket entirely. The remaining three days consist of the four stages of a single-elimination bracket, beginning with a pre-quarterfinal round on Friday morning. The six semifinal matchups are played in succession on Saturday, and the three championship games take place on Sunday.
For teams and players, making it through the intense crucible of the tournament to become a national champion is the single most difficult accomplishment. For spectators, there is no finer display of the power and grace of the sport at its highest levels. Stars are made at Nationals. Careers are defined. Legacies are forged.
Who Competes at Nationals?
Nationals comprises three tournaments, one for each of the primary USAU divisions: Women’s, Men’s, and Mixed. Each division is made up of a field of 16 teams, including the champions of each of USAU’s eight regions. (The remaining eight slots are awarded to the highest regional finishers for regions that earned the extra ‘strength bids’ for a given season.) Those 48 teams qualify for the tournament by rising above the entire club landscape – nearly 600 unique self-organized, self-funded teams hailing from the US and Canada – in sectional and regional competition.
Simply qualifying for the tournament is a badge of honor for most clubs. For the tournament’s mainstays, such as Raleigh Ring of Fire1, San Francisco Fury2, and Boston Slow3, the annual appearance is a mark of the program’s consistency and quality over time, and the likely prospect of playing at Nationals continues to help them recruit top talent year after year. First-time qualifiers – whose ranks this year include Salt Lake Shrimp and Minneapolis Mallard (Men’s) and Sacramento Tower and Austin Disco Club (Mixed)4 – view Nationals qualification as a stamp of authenticity. A program that makes a Nationals debut can be said to have made it to the big time.
The opposite effect also holds true: there is an air of lost dignity – even a whiff of disgrace – for teams who typically play at Nationals but fail to finish high enough at their regional tournaments to join the field in a given year. Longtime Mixed contenders Philadelphia AMP missed the tournament this season for the first time in 18 years; San Francisco Nightlock went 11 straight seasons of qualifying in Women’s before 2024; last year, Seattle Sockeye failed to make the Men’s field for only the second time in 22 years.
Virtually all of the best frisbee players from North America will take the field in San Diego, including the reigning Players of the Year for each division: Christian Boxley (Men’s), Claire Trop (Women’s), and Jade McLaughlin (Mixed). In the recently published 2024 edition of our annual top-25 player rankings – you can view the full Men’s, Women’s, and Mixed lists – 74 of the players who made the cut (out of 75) are on Nationals teams.5
The make-up of the player field at Nationals, particularly among the best of the best, increasingly includes stars from other parts of the world, as well. This year’s Nationals will feature many of the best players from Colombia, Japan, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, France, the Czech Republic, and New Zealand. Such leading lights as twins Manu and Valeria Cárdenas, Daan De Marrée, Elliott Bonnet, Levke Walczak, Liam Haberfield, Kanari Imanishi, and Floor Keulartz will all take part in the prestigious North American competition.
History of Nationals
The inaugural UPA – the national governing body was the Ultimate Players Association for decades before transitioning to USA Ultimate – Club Nationals for the Men’s6 division took place in 1979. A Women’s division was added in 1981. The UPA added Mixed to the mix much later, starting in 1998. The three tournaments have been played every year since their inceptions, except for a one-year hiatus during 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over time, dynasties have risen and fallen. Santa Barbara Lady Condors won four consecutive Women’s division titles in the 1980s, Boston Lady Godiva put together championship streaks of four- and three-years in the 1990s and 2000s, and San Francisco Fury won seven of their all-divisions-leading 12 titles every year from 2006 – 2012. In the Men’s division, New York New York’s five-year championship streak was succeeded by an even more impressive streak of six years from Boston Death or Glory. Mixed has not yet seen a run as dominant as the best in Women’s or Men’s: Minneapolis Drag’n Thrust’s threepeat from 2013 – 2015 is the division’s high water mark.
The phenomenon of a juggernaut dynasty, though, has become increasingly rare in recent years as the championship-contending tiers of each division have grown more crowded. Drag’n Thrust’s three-year run has not been equaled in any division since then. In fact, there have been nine different champions7 at the three Nationals held this decade – not a repeat in the bunch. The three teams who could begin a dynastic run by defending their 2023 championships are Boston Brute Squad (Women’s), Washington DC Truck Stop (Men’s), and Fort Collins shame. (Mixed). All three are widely considered to be in contention to do so.
An archive of championship finals and semifinals in all three divisions from 2012 – 2023 is available to watch on USA Ultimate’s Youtube and Vimeo pages. Additional games are available for Ultiworld Subscribers in our extensive video library. And while it is temporarily down while undergoing maintenance8, there is no more exhaustive resource of the game’s history than Ultimate-Reference.
2024 Storylines
This year’s Nationals figures to be as exciting as any in recent memory, with a host of teams legitimately vying for championships in all three divisions. Interestingly, the timing of this year’s World Ultimate Championships has meant that occasions when any of the top teams have competed with full rosters have been exceedingly rare. It has been difficult to gauge their true strength relative to one another, adding an extra layer of unpredictability to the outlook.
Men’s has been the most dynasty-resistant division in the modern era: the last seven seasons have seen seven different champions, and the division’s last club to go back-to-back was San Francisco Revolver in 2010 and 2011.9 This season may see an eighth winner in eight years, as Chicago Machine, Boston DiG, Portland Rhino Slam!, and perhaps even Atlanta Chain Lightning are within striking distance of a 2024 title. They’ll have their work cut out for them to get past the winners from the last two years, Truck Stop and Denver Johnny Bravo, as well as a handful of other teams with high ceilings.
The path to a title Women’s division, after years of being fully controlled by Fury, Boston Brute Squad, and one or two other top competitors each season, appears more wide open then ever. Brute Squad’s line-up of top European, South American, and US players is good enough to defend their 2023 championship. But with Fury, Denver Molly Brown, Raleigh Phoenix, and 2023 runners-up Washington DC Scandal playing at or above Brute Squad’s level throughout the season, it is a five-team contending class with no favorite. Additionally, New York BENT and San Diego Flipside both have enough talent to upset the apple cart and add a dash of chaos to the bracket.
Unlike the other two divisions, Mixed can be said to have a tournament favorite. Seattle BFG, having cruised to a 21-1 record so far this season, have been the most consistently winning club in the country this year. That said, predicting results with any sort of accuracy in the Mixed division is a fool’s errand: teams routinely flame out of contention early or rise well above their station in a run through the bracket. BFG’s deep crop of challengers includes (but is by no means limited to) 2023 champions shame., Drag’n Thrust, Disco Club, Ann Arbor Hybrid10, and Vancouver Red Flag. It is anyone’s guess how they (and the other 10 teams at the tournament) will finish.
For a more thorough look ahead, keep an eye out for Ultiworld’s Nationals pool previews in the days just before the start of the tournament, in which our reporting staff dive into the prospects for every team in the competition.
How to Follow Nationals
The best way to follow Nationals, if you can manage it, is to travel in person to San Diego. A $20 ticket ($15 when purchased online in advance) gets you all-day access, and you can get as close as within a few yards of the sidelines of any field at the Surf Cup Sports Complex. The Mixed and Women’s semifinals and all three finals will be played at nearby Canyon Crest High School stadium.
For following the action at home, there is no substitute for an Ultiworld subscription – it’s the only way to watch live broadcasts of the 2024 Championships, including all of the semis and finals.11 Subscribers will also gain access to the Ultiworld Discord, featuring topical discussion across dozens of channels and up-to-the-minute live reporting from our on-the-ground coverage team, and subscriber-only articles during the event.
Anyone, whether Ultiworld subscribers or not, will be able to read Ultiworld’s pool previews, Thursday and Friday live blogs, and recaps of the semis and finals. USAU’s tournament score reporter pages also contain a lot of information, including game results and some statistics (goals, assists, blocks, turnovers) updated in real-time. Finally, if you are a fan of a particular team or player, you can often find fun, informative, or otherwise interesting content on their social media channels.
27 consecutive years in Men’s ↩
25 consecutive years in Women’s ↩
19 consecutive years in Mixed ↩
There are no teams making a Nationals debut in Women’s in 2024. ↩
The exception is Lindsay McKenna of Philadelphia AMP in Mixed. ↩
then ‘Open’ ↩
Men’s: Ring of Fire, Johnny Bravo, Truck Stop. Women’s: Fury, Molly Brown, Brute Squad. Mixed: BFG, Mixtape, shame. ↩
scheduled to be finished by December 2024 ↩
Revolver won five titles from 2010 – 2017. ↩
Hybrid handed BFG their sole loss of the season in the US Open final in August ↩
Up until last year some of the semis and all of the finals were broadcast live on ESPN3, which required an additional subscription and was not accessible to viewers in all countries. ↩
