Here's our best guess.
May 5, 2025 by Charlie Eisenhood in Analysis
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After the excitement of Regionals, we now have the full field of Nationals teams. It’s time to start thinking about what the seeding and pools might look like for the College Championships.
The post-Regionals rankings will be heavily leaned upon, and the order of finish at Regionals “will be strongly considered in determining seeding for Nationals, but will not be binding.” Please note that we do our best to follow USA Ultimate’s other guidelines for seeding: head-to-head wins matter at the margin and historic success is considered. USAU’s post-Regionals rankings won’t be out until Wednesday, so we are using Frisbee-Rankings.com, updated last night, as a proxy. It is possible that there will be 1 or 2 small discrepancies in the final ordering that could affect seeding.
Let’s kick things off right away with the pools generated by my predicted seeding.
Men’s Division
| POOL A | POOL B | POOL C | POOL D |
|---|---|---|---|
| Davenport (1) | Elon (2) | Whitman (3) | Lewis & Clark (4) |
| Wesleyan (8) | Carleton CHOP (7) | Oklahoma Christian (6) | Middlebury (5) |
| Missouri S&T (12) | Rochester (11) | Richmond (10) | Franciscan (9) |
| Bowdoin (13) | Berry (14) | Claremont (15) | Hillsdale (16) |
Notes
- By and large, these seedings are tied tightly to the algorithmic rankings. There have been only a handful of swaps, some for head-to-head, some to avoiding regional rematches (not directly in the USAU guidelines but generally done at D-III Nationals).
- Whitman bumps up from #5 in the rankings to the #3 seed thanks to their regional win and head-to-head over Lewis & Clark.
- Wesleyan jumps Franciscan to grab the #8 seed, again due to a head-to-head win.
- I initially had Rochester leapfrogging Richmond due to a H2H win, but it creates a regional matchup between Elon and Richmond, so I just defaulted back to the algorithmic ranking. You could make a case for rewarding Rochester and then bumping Richmond down to the #12 seed, but that felt like a little too much intervention.
Women’s Division
| POOL A | POOL B | POOL C | POOL D |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wesleyan (1) | Haverford/Bryn Mawr (2) | Carleton Eclipse (3) | Whitman (4) |
| Davenport (8) | St. Olaf (7) | Middlebury (6) | Kenyon (5) |
| Mount Holyoke (12) | Union (11) | Lewis & Clark (10) | Rochester (9) |
| Richmond (13) | Puget Sound (14) | Rice (15) | Claremont (16) |
Notes
- By and large, these seedings are tied tightly to the algorithmic rankings. There have been only a handful of swaps, some for head-to-head, some to avoiding regional rematches (not directly in the USAU guidelines but generally done at D-III Nationals).
- Wesleyan is the clear #1 seed. They are 2-0 vs #1 ranked Haverford/Bryn Mawr.
- Davenport got bumped to the #8 seed over the higher-ranked Rochester to avoid a regional matchup.
- Puget Sound got bumped to the #14 seed over the higher-ranked Rice to avoid a regional matchup.
