The final leg of the Southwest Triple Crown tour features some intriguing elite-level East Coast competition into the West Coast mix.
February 27, 2025 by Edward Stephens in Preview, Video
Ultiworld’s 2025 college coverage 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.
The final stop along the Southwest Triple Crown Tour is upon us as 17 teams from around the country make the journey to the annual elite event.
Full Stanford Invite Competition Schedule & Results
How To Watch
We’ve got you covered for all the exciting action this weekend. You will need an Ultiworld Standard or All-Access subscription to be able to watch games from the Stanford Invite 2025 Event Page. Or get access for your entire team and coaching staff with a 2025 College Team Pack!
The event begins March 1, LIVE on Ultiworld.com. All broadcasted games will be available on-demand for viewing immediately following the live broadcasts.
Full Broadcast Schedule
Tournament Preview
EWO Bring Championship Bonafides West
The single biggest story of the early season in the women’s division has been #2 Tufts EWO’s statement victory at Queen City Tune Up. The tricky weather exposed some cracks in the tournament’s other top contenders, but Tufts only grew stronger in the wind and rain. It wasn’t all U24 teammates Emily Kemp and Lia Schwartz either. (Schwartz, to be sure, did unleash a barrage of big throws.) Sophie Hankin, Ryanne Barrett, Kate Gearing, and (especially) second-year Annabel White proved themselves not merely worthy of being in the conversation with the comparatively better-known names on #4 Carleton Syzygy and #6 UNC Pleiades, but of letting their actions do the talking. Tufts simplified their offensive game plan, stepped up the playmaking, showed discipline on defense, and threw and caught better than their opponents. It was a spectacular performance.
The upshot? Top seed at Stanford Invite and a big, bright target on their backs. Can they handle being the tournament front runners? The Schwartz-White connection, the Kemp takeover moments, the top-to-bottom hustle, and do-the-little-things-right approach are going to serve them well. But it will take more than star power and good habits to stay ahead of a deep West Coast field. If they get through this one, though, you can pretty much ink them in for a deep run at Nationals.
Round Three of the Golden State Fracas
Which team is California’s best? The answer to that so far this year has been unclear. For the third time this season, though, we’ll get a lot of data to try and make sense of. At Santa Barbara Invite, #9 UC San Diego Dragon Coalition beat #11 Cal Poly SLO SLOMotion and #13 Stanford Superfly to take an early lead. Then, during February’s Presidents’ Day Invite, #8 UC Santa Cruz Sol leapt to the front of the pack with a win over D.Co (and just about everybody else). #15 UC Davis Rogue and #16 UC Santa Barbara Burning Skirts have been within striking distance of all the others all season. #20 UCLA BLU have been creeping up to the back of the pack, too.
It’s wild at first glance. And then you look at their rosters and it starts to make sense. How is there so much talent at these schools at this moment? When you can’t definitively say that Devin Quinn and Laura Blume (UC Santa Barbara) are the best top end in the state, you know the talent pipeline is deep. Abbi Shilts and Tori Gray (UC San Diego), Margo and Tucker Donahue (Cal Poly), Emily Chou and Lucy Mertz (UC Davis), and Harper Baer and Sage McGinley-Smith (Stanford) all stack up well at the top. One of these teams will finish with a better weekend than the others, that’s almost a given. One of them might win the tournament. Just remember that it means nothing, because they’ll be slugging it out all the way through Southwest Regionals. And it’s our good fortune to watch.
Washington Wild Card
And the award for most interesting team goes to… #12 Washington Element. Freed from having to face a million (or thereabouts) other Northwest foes1 for a couple of days, they can take a deep breath and focus on finding their ceiling. They probably have plenty more to give than they showed at Santa Barbara Invite. With younger players like Lucy Tanner and Lauren Goddu stepping into major roles, they could be closer to running with the likes of #1 UBC Thunderbirds or #3 Oregon Fugue than they are to the California teams surrounding the. Don’t be surprised if they stun the field with a tournament win.
Except #19 BYU CHI ↩
