Kicking off the 2025 college season!
January 23, 2025 by Edward Stephens in Preview, Video
The first leg of the Southwest Triple Crown Tour1 kicks off the 2025 season in style. Most of the top programs in California, a host of strong Northwest teams, Canadian contenders, and a smattering of travelers from the Eastern half of the country will step onto the line in Santa Barbara. Almost to a team they have their eyes set on Nationals, and this weekend will provide the first major proving ground. The women’s division, with seven preseason top-10 representatives, boasts one of the strongest fields in tournament history, and will likely only be rivaled by Northwest Challenge at the end of the season in terms of overall strength. The men’s division does not have quite as sterling a top end, with only one team in our preseason top-10, but, like the women’s division, features a crowded and intriguing field one tier down and will have serious bid implications.
We’ve got you covered for all the exciting action this weekend. Follow along on the Santa Barbara Invite 2025 Event Page for livestreams and updates throughout the weekend. The event begins January 25th, LIVE on Ultiworld.com. Read on for streaming details and previews of all the main storylines.
How To Watch
You will need an Ultiworld Standard or All-Access subscription to be able to watch games from the Santa Barbara Invite 2025 Event Page. Or get access for your entire team and coaching staff with a 2025 College Team Pack!
All broadcasted games will be available on-demand for viewing immediately following the live broadcasts.
Full Broadcast Schedule
Full Women’s Division Schedule & Results
Full Men’s Division Schedule & Results
Tournament Preview
Women’s Division
First Outing for Championship Hopefuls
The 2025 season kicks off with a bang in the women’s division, as five teams in our preseason top-seven – all of whom finished 2024 as Nationals quarterfinalists or better – lace up their cleats for a star-spangled collective debut.2 Between #2 Colorado Quandary, #4 British Columbia Thunderbirds, #5 Oregon Fugue, #6 Carleton Syzygy, and #7 Stanford Superfly, a lot of ambitious programs look to make their title cases plain.
For all their skill, they all have questions hovering about them. Have Colorado’s Clil Phillips & co. learned from their years of Nationals bracket heartbreak in a way that will allow them to win more games against the highest level of opposition in key moments? Is UBC’s Madison Ong back to full health, and can the deep team find a way to replace the top-end production of 2024 stars Anna Goddu and Helena Tremblay? How ready are Oregon’s former youth ultimate championship teammates Trout Weybright, Syris Linkfield, and Acacia Hahn to lead a championship charge at an even higher level of play?
Syzygy, always well-traveled and well-stocked with talent, peaked early last year when they ended UNC’s winning streak but couldn’t quite get past quarters at Nationals. They’ll want the big win like that to happen on Memorial Day weekend this time around. Will stars Naomi Fina and 2024 Rookie of the Year Chagall Gelfand be able to manage to pace the team without all-around playmaker Tori Gray? Last year’s surprise finalists Superfly famously ramp up well from the beginning of the season until Nationals. Will that mean they won’t be competitive right off the bat? Regardless, they have a huge contingent of elite experience carrying over from 2024 with Sage McGinley-Smith, Anika Quon, Harper Baer, Amelia Hawkins, and more. They just might be great from the start this time around.
West Coast Bid Bonanza?
It’s 1849 all over again: treasure out West! But 176 years later, the gold doesn’t take the form of nuggets or flakes. Instead, teams from the Southwest and Northwest will be out panning for bids to Nationals. How many strength bids they end up mining and minting – 4? 7? 9? – will depend on their regular season performance, beginning this weekend. There are simply too many teams to go into detail, so here’s a list: #9 UC San Diego Dragon Coalition, #10 Washington Element, #13 BYU CHI, #14 UC Santa Barbara Burning Skirts, #16 Utah Spiral Jetty, #17 Victoria Vikes, #18 UC Santa Cruz Sol, #19 UC Davis Rogue, and #20 Cal Poly SLO SLOmotion. That’s a lot of regional muscle.
While the bids won’t be officially sorted out until the end of the season, one of those teams will face an important cross-country test: #15 Penn Venus. Last year’s Ohio Valley champions head west to test their mettle early against Nationals-level competition. How well Venus, led by Grace Maroon and Chaily Derecskey, fare against the dizzying array of West Coast powerhouses (and vice versa) should give us an important indicator for the entire season’s bid landscape.
Men’s Division
SLO Warm Up
As runaway tournament favorites, #3 Cal Poly SLO SLOCORE will have their sights set on other measures of success. Internally, how will the offense perform without the field-expanding throwing arsenal of now-graduated Calvin Brown? It’s certain to look very different, so the big question mark is whether some combination of players like Kyle Lew, Anton Orme, Alex Nelson, Max Gade, and rookie Ari Pincus can find the consistency, efficiency, and power to carry them deep into the season.
Externally, the most important considerations will be the score lines. If our internal preseason assessments at Ultiworld are accurate, they should make it through the weekend undefeated (although nothing is guaranteed). Provided they meet that goal, making sure they win all of their games comfortably will be an important early glimpse at the ultimate height of their ceiling. After making semis in 2023, they pushed through to the 2024 national championship game. Are they once again genuine championship material in 2025?
Who Else is for Real?
Beyond Cal Poly, the SBI field is filled with question marks, any one of whom – or, realistically, none of whom – could turn out to be a surprise powerhouse this spring. Do you like #19 UC Santa Cruz Slugs, back near full strength with a healthy Selim Jones, to return to their 2023 Nationals form? Or perhaps you want to bank on the Nyle Lebbell- and Max Pettenuzzo-led #18 Victoria Vikes? Two Shrimp-headlined programs, #23 Utah Zion Curtain and #24 Utah Valley Ultimate, could quickly build some collegiate scaffolding on the foundation of club success they set last autumn. Other ranked programs who are in contention for the final are #16 Cal Ursa Major and #17 Washington Sundodgers.
And there are a couple of intriguing programs from outside the rankings, as well. Illinois Rise look to avenge their loss in last year’s Great Lakes regional final with a solid start. How far can upperclassmen Nate Astrom, Kai Bowen, and Kai Tang take them this go-round? And BYU CHI, starting the season unranked for the first time in years, will look to prove our expectations wrong in the first leg of their annual bi-coastal back-to-back3. Simon Dastrup and Jensen Wells are among the players to watch for a program whose 2024 was below the standard set by previous campaigns.
Santa Barbara Invite, Presidents’ Day Invite, and Stanford Invite. As always, credit to our own Graham Gerhart for coining the phrase. ↩
The other three 2024 quarterfinalists, #1 Vermont Ruckus, #3 UNC Pleiades, and #8 Tufts EWO, are staying on the East Coast early in the season. ↩
BYU will play at Florida Warm-Up the following weekend. ↩
