D-I College Championships 2025: Pool Previews (Men’s)

Get to know the 20 teams competing for a D-I college title!

May 23, 2025 by Alex Rubin and Edward Stephens in Preview

Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2025 college 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.

The D-I College Championships start on Friday! After a long regular season, the deepest field in recent memory is ready to challenge for the title. UMass is chasing their first – and most important – tournament win of the season, SLO wants to make it make to the final and avenge their loss, Carleton hopes to make it deep in the bracket to right a recent string of disappointing finishes, Colorado is chasing their first title in over a decade with Tobi Brooks at the helm, and relative newcomers like Penn State, Oregon State, and Ottawa are gearing up to make a push in the bracket.

We’ve got you covered for all the exciting action this weekend, but before the first pull goes up, let’s get to know the teams who will be competing in Burlington. You can follow along on the D-I College Championships event page for updates and livestreams throughout the weekend!

Pool A

Teams: #2 UMass Zoodisc, #8 Oregon State Beavers, #23 Texas TUFF, #14 Vermont Chill, #17 Utah Zion Curtain
Overall Strength: 💪💪💪
Star Power: ⭐⭐⭐
Upset Alert: 🚨🚨

Massachusetts Zoodisc

How is it that a team without a tournament victory nab the top seed? “If you finish second enough times I guess the averages work out,” said UMass coach Dylan Tunnell, tongue firmly in cheek.

The creative mathematics of that assessment aside, all you have to do is take a single glance at Zoodisc’s season beyond the top-end results to see worthy tournament favorites. They have been the most consistent team of the spring, reaching the finals of all three East Coast majors: Florida Warm Up, Smoky Mountain Invite, and Easterns. The fact that they lost all three finals – to fellow heavyweights Carleton, UNC, and Colorado – does not dampen their prospects at all. They’ll take further encouragement from a victory at New England Regionals that both ensured a competitive tournament win and took care of a necessary bullet point team skill by erasing a second half deficit against Northeastern in the regional final.

“We hadn’t really had a comeback [before that],” said Artie Aucoin. “It was] a great opportunity for us to try and come back, to try and kickstart a team.”

For a side that couldn’t find their way to getting back out in front of a much lower-seeded NC State in a shocking prequarters exit a year ago, knowing that they can turn the tides in-game will be crucial.

Depth has been the key to Zoodisc’s success, both in the long term – potential recruits love to see how much run the entire roster gets every game – and within the context of every half of ultimate they play. The offense goes ten players deep – Ethan Lieman, Gavin Abrahamsson, Griffin Gee, Caelan McSweeney, rookie sensation™ Roan Dunkerley, Ethan Schiff, Carter Hawkins, Wyatt Kellman, rookie sensation™ Mason Stone, Luca Harwood. They’re all decorated (or soon-to-be-decorated) players in the college ultisphere, and they have roughly a million ways to beat you.

“If I could sum it up into one word,” mused D-line captain Artie Aucoin. “The thing that makes them hardest to stop is their versatility.”

“If there’s one thing I hate about playing [against] Zoodisc’s O-line, it’s trying to stop them from moving the ball — and from moving in general,” said Nima Lhamo, one of the D-line captains.

The D-line personnel go, if anything, even deeper, especially accounting for semi-regular crossovers from Lieman, McSweeney, Abrahamsson, Kellman, and Stone. Leo Narbonne, Aucoin, and Charlie Norris are more than capable post turn quarterbacks. And with the likes of Lhamo, Stone, Calan Kirkpatrick, Tomo Liou, and Sam Green ready to disrupt at any moment, they get plenty of chances to lead a charge.

Is it enough to amount to a championship? In a vacuum, yes. Against the other contenders? That’s a tougher question, and it is, as the wisdom goes, why they play the games. But given the state of the UMass recruiting in recent years – they’ve had players on the Rookie of the Year podium each of the past three years, are in good shape this year, and, if rumors are true, are getting a few more top prospects for 2026 – it could kick off a potential dynasty if they manage it.

Oregon State Beavers

Oregon State captain Ben Thoennes has one thing on his mind.

“I’ve been talking about one thing all year,” he said. “I’ve been hoping we get to play them, so we’re lucky we got into their pool. That’s our ideal 1-seed matchup. I’ve had a confidence all year that we can take them down.”

It’s easy to see why: Zoodisc, as the tournament’s top seed, are a measuring stick team. On top of that, it’s going to be the most important way to ensure a path to quarters. And it could potentially throw them to the opposite side of the bracket from Oregon Ego, who have had the Beavers’ number in ultra big-sib fashion this year. Naturally, beating Zoodisc is the target.

Naturally, it makes one want to ask: Can they do it?

That’s easy. The answer is an emphatic yes. In the first place, they are ridiculously talented and multi-faceted. “Right now our strong point is that our ceiling is super-high,” said captain Forrest Vargyas. “We’ve got the ability to beat anybody, play tight with anybody.”

The Beavers have a pair of captains in Felix Moren and Ben Thoennes who capable of orchestrating a complete offensive possession or defensive stand. They’ve got big throwers and big targets – Henry Wayte and Callahan Bosworth fit both halves of the equation and spent at least one half this season (the Presidents’ Day Invite final against Oregon) exploring how often they could connect with each other for scores.They’ve got rangy block-getting defenders like Forrest Vargyas and CJ Kaperick, they’ve got in-your-shorts shutdown stoppers like Alesh Fremouw and Seiji Koenigsberg. They’ve got at least one important weapon in second-year Leo Renzema who, because of injury earlier in the spring, isn’t showing up on much scouting film.

Will they, though? That’s a much dicier proposition though. Some of it will come down to the matchup advantages and the game-to-game variation of each player, of course. But some of it will come down to how well the Beavers can implement the complexities and in-game adjustments that have defined their 2025 season.

They aren’t always the elevated version of themselves. Sometimes they fall back on simply shooting it – which, to be fair, on the Thoennes-led D-line is often the plan.

“If you make a deep cut when [Thoennes] has the disc, you have to expect that it’s going to come up. So its on you as a cutter to make sure you put yourself in a position to go and get the disc, because [he] is gonna throw it,” said Vargyas.

Even when it’s in system, that’s how possessions can become more of a roll of the dice than a controlled effort. Continuing to regulate those old impulses so that the sudden-shot threat retains its potency without unnecessarily hamstringing productive offense is what will give the potential of a pool win the true feel of reality. And the further they slip from that vision, the more they risk tumbling down behind the teams they spent an entire spring outplaying.

Texas TUFF

The longest current bracket streak (11) in D-I men’s ultimate belongs to UNC Darkside, as everyone with an interest in the division knows. What may have escaped your notice is that the second longest streak belongs to Texas TUFF, who have reached elimination play in each of the last six seasons¹. From a historical perspective, then, they are a good bet to hold seed (or better).

The talent perspective tells a similar tale. TUFF are lucky enough to get the services of one of the most spectacular players in the game, Xavier Fuzat. Fuzat’s particular mix of quickness, elevation, flight, unconventionality, and (when it comes to some of his throws) pure cheek makes him as unique a star as the division has ever seen. Somewhat more conventional but only slightly less cracked: teammates Owen Smith, Jake Worthington, John Clyde, and Aaron Barcio. Between them all, they form a small army of powerful two-way players.

On paper, they should at least threaten to knock off Oregon State or UMass and be favored defending their seed against Vermont and Utah. The reality of their season, though, begs to differ. TUFF started out with an impressive third-place finish at Florida Warm Up but have slid since then. Their 3-4 Smoky Mountain Invite performance was only middling, though and it was a disappointment for them to lose in the final of their home tournament to Tufts E-Men. None of that would have mattered had they surged back at South Central Regionals.

Reader, they did not surge back at South Central Regionals.

Far from challenging Colorado Mamabird for another chapter of the classic rivalry, they got the doors blown off of them by their newer rivals WashU Contra. Then they squeaked into Nationals following a battle with Colorado State Hibida.

So, which version of TUFF do you believe in? Do you believe in the program’s legacy and in the promise of the talent? Or do you believe in the second-half slide that nearly left them out of the tournament?

Vermont Chill

For most of the season, Vermont appeared to be out of the running for a spot at Nationals. Chill’s offense looked disoriented and their defense lacked punch. Chill finished the regular season with a dismal 8-14 record. But the beauty of college ultimate is that come Regionals, anything can happen. Vermont sprinted through the backdoor bracket, upsetting Brown and Tufts to earn their fourth straight trip to the College Championships.

For this Vermont team, the regular season results don’t really matter. Of all the teams in the men’s division, perhaps no other is more reliant on vibes than Vermont. Whether it’s Casey Thornton throwing up schmeat, Declan Kervick exuding aura, or any one of Chill’s talented sophomores finding their role in a developing system, Vermont just needs to show up and play their best now that they’re at Nationals.

If Thornton can continue the heater he was on Sunday at Regionals, the Chill offense will be scary for opposing defenses. Surrounded by possession-keepers like Ryan Bliss and Jack Rice, Thornton has the green light to move the disc creatively and attack the spaces he sees fit. His development into a legitimate college star opens up the opportunity for Kervick to hone in on his home on the D-line. A talented matchup defender and tenacious reset cutter after a turn, Kervick can single-handedly will his teams to breaks when he has the chance.

Watching Vermont play, it is obvious that they have the talent for another bracket run, but it took them the entire season to put their pieces together in a way that actually resulted in on-field success. So the question is, which team will show up in Burlington, Washington?² The regular season outfit that struggled with the simple task of completing upfield passes, or the barnstormers from Regionals who avenged losses and stole a bid?

Utah Zion Curtain

Let’s just be upfront: Zion Curtain was not expected to make Nationals based on the season they had. And yet, they rolled through Northwest Regionals, claiming the third place bid to Nationals despite coming in seeded ninth. “I think that it definitely did come as a surprise,” captain Elijah Watchalotone said, “but we came to the weekend knowing that on paper, we have some of the best players in the country, and that we have all the tools to succeed, and we just hadn’t really been on the right page.”

It turns out that switching Oscar Brown and Will Selfridge from the D-line to the offense propelled ZCU to new heights. “Regionals was the first time that we actually played our new lines that we had come up with like a month before that–due to injuries we would have like seven out of the nine of our O-line, and then that would switch with some people getting healthy and then others getting injured. So I think that once we actually had our whole entire O-line that we had envisioned, and everyone had kind of figured out slightly how to play with each other and our roles on the line, I think we realized that, we literally had to do nothing during the point for an O-line point with our personnel..No one needs to do anything crazy. You break a mark once, and then somehow the disc is in the end zone.”

With their newly dynamic offense, Utah is hoping to surprise some teams that expect them to play like they did earlier this season when they lost to non-Nationals teams like UC San Diego or Washington. That being said, their measure of success is not only tied to the number next to their name in the win column. After a season of build-up and a stellar Regionals, Utah is a classic “happy to be here” team. “It’s just about the experience and celebrating a great season,” Selfridge said.

While nothing is guaranteed, this seems closer to the introduction to a long book rather than a short story. With stars like Selfridge, Brown, Rainor Alin, and Grayson Rettberg just finishing their second season together, there is plenty of room to grow into a competitive team over the next few years. “I look to Spiral Jetty, our woman’s team; they played at Nationals last year, and they got a bunch of experience for all of their players, and now they earned a bid. I think that that’s something we’ll eventually want to try to do,” Captain Jack Valentine said. “I’m really excited to test what we have against teams that we haven’t seen before.”

Pool B

Teams: #4 Oregon Ego, #9 UC Santa Cruz Slugs, #10 Northeastern Huskies, #11Georgia Jojah, #13 Western Washington DIRT
Overall Strength: 💪💪💪💪
Star Power: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Upset Alert: 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

Oregon Ego

In 2022, Oregon Ego missed Nationals, finishing in 4th place of a two-bid region. In 2023 they needed a massive pre-quarters upset to make it past the first round of the Nationals bracket. By 2024, they were playing as consistently as ever and frankly should have made the semifinals at Nationals. Entering Nationals in 2025, the Ego upswing continues and Oregon is among the favorites to take home the title. “From before the season as leadership, talking about how we were going to approach this year, we knew we had the talent, coaching, and depth to contend for a title this year,” team captain Chander Boyd-Fliegel said. “And so that’s been at the forefront of everyone’s minds going back to November, October.  And that’s something we’ve talked about as a team and that we’re building towards.”

At every tournament this season, Ego tried to practice winning. While there may have been times when they gave their younger players more run, there were others when the team tightened up playing time and focused on putting their best players in the best position to win. Take Easterns for example. At the beginning of the tournament Ego struggled to string together passes when the D-line took possession and punch in break opportunities, so the team flipped handler Max Massey from his role as an offensive disc-mover to the hub of the D-line. He thrived and the team clearly improved, notably beating Carleton and UNC after losing to both at Smoky Mountain Invite a few weeks before. A talented thrower, fierce competitor, and endless fountain of energy, Massey was just the injection of life the Ego D-line needed to take on a fearsome identity that lets the team build and maintain leads.

The overall growth shown from a strong sophomore class enabled Ego to make Massey’s switch without jeopardizing the team’s offensive consistency. Alex Hall-Witt and Jonah Hammes have each taken on significant roles on the O-line. While both showed promise last season, they are each getting more opportunities to shine this year and could become household names as vital role players by the time the tournament is over. On the defensive end, rookie Akash McMinn is quickly becoming the team’s go-to stopper. With crossover skills from a high school basketball career, McMinn is accustomed to taking on difficult matchups and never shies away from a challenge.

From the trust they put in young players who are excelling to the ability of veteran talents to mold their skills to fit the team’s needs, this Ego team is focused and ready to continue their continual growth pattern all the way to a title. “There isn’t much in the minds of leadership beyond doing whatever it takes to give us the best chance to win,” Boyd-Fliegel said.

UC Santa Cruz Slugs

If you’re just tuning in to the college season for Nationals, checking on the seeds to prime yourself for the long weekend, you might stumble when you see the Slugs sitting at No. 7overall heading into the tournament. A double-take is a natural reaction when encountering a program that didn’t even make the tournament last year – a heartbreaker at Southwest Regionals against Cal knocked them out – perched in one of the top spots this year.

The obvious question is how they managed such a profound turnaround in such a short time period. There are a number of factors, but one of the most important is undoubtedly the bitter taste left by last year’s game-to-go loss.

“It was a devastating way to lose a sports game,” said captain Mario Ambrose. “I’ve played a lot of sports games, and that was by far one of the hardest losses ever, to choke away a game like that. Everyone was just devastated.”

But there was a silver lining. “We kept practicing until the end of the school year, even though we weren’t going to Nationals,” said Ambrose. “That has continued all the way until this year. And we’re kind of on a journey [now] that started back then.”

That extra commitment has paid off in a huge way. From the word ‘go’ the Slugs have been in the realm of the country’s top-10 teams, and they’ve beaten Cal every time they played them, including at regionals this year.

“The way we motivated ourselves this year was, ‘We don’t want it to be up to chance, we want to be in that game and now that we’re better,'” said captain Selim Jones.

Unless you count the games they dropped to Washington Sundodgers early in the season – before the Sundodgers’ bizarre postseason implosion – they don’t have any bad losses on the ledger. Stanford Invite saw them run the table, and they have a key victory over Oregon State. Upon review, the No. 7 seed seems like it fits just right.

Based on the high floor of their play, there’s an opportunity for them to reach even higher. You simply won’t get a bad game out of the 2025 Slugs. Ambrose, Jones, Milan Moslehi, and Kien Warren are all matchup problems. And Toby Warren is more than a problem: he has turned into one of the premier offensive players in the division. How opposing defenses approach the task of slowing him down – outside of provoking the legitimate question, ‘Can they?’ – will have an outsize impact on the Pool B standings.

Another factor in who makes the bracket and who earns a bye – B projects to be the most competitive pool across all five teams – will be how Cole Mires responds to the pressure of his first Nationals. The Slugs rookie has been outstanding this spring, staying open in the backfield and hitting on a high percentage of high-difficulty shots, a performance that has freed up the rest of the line into more versatile roles.

“The most amazing thing that I see in him is his poise,” said Jones. “When I was a rookie… it was still terrifying catching a disc under pressure in the college environment. Whereas [Mires] is coming in, and we’re running pull plays to initiate to him. And he’s unfazed by it.”

Nationals is a different beast from the regular season, though, and it remains to be seen whether he can sink or swim in the environment. It’s a fair question to apply to the entire team, given their absence last year. But Slugs have been on this Earth for approximately 520 million years, which means they have plenty of experience adapting to new environments.

Northeastern Huskies

Much like poolmates UC Santa Cruz, Northeastern rocketed up the rankings in 2025, clearing the Nationals bar with ease after missing out a year ago. There’s one key difference, though. The journey back to Nationals for the Huskies didn’t take a year, it took four. They came up short in 2022, 2023, and 2024, missing out when they had highlight artists like Ben Field, Gus Norrbom, and Simon Carapella.

It has meant a career of disappointment for several of the team’s upperclassmen, including star Peter Boerth. We’ll get to the other key members of the Huskies, but since it’s his first time on this stage let’s throw some flowers in Boerth’s direction. The Strath Haven High School (Pennsylvania) product has been a monster of a cutter since he arrived in Boston. He bodies defenders out of position, goes up for the disc as fast or faster than anybody in the division, and has dragster-tier straight line speed. Keeping him out of the end zone is a losing battle. Now that he has also added a much more dynamic throwing arsenal to his game, he’s a problem when being forced under, too. For those reasons, this season he has been one of the division’s most prominent takeover players. Get ready for a show.

But Boerth can afford to be choosy, because he is surrounded by a brilliant (if too-often overlooked) nucleus of top Huskies. Kalten Toone and Jackson McGuinness have made the O-line more dangerous by offering overwhelming deep options when the defense is foolish enough to commit too many resources to Boerth. Ciaran Pratley and Ben Chamis have both taken huge steps forward in the handling set. UNC Charlotte transfer Jack Simmons and Sam Freedman have taken lead roles for a hard-nosed D-line.

The results of the program’s new bloom have been less overwhelming than objectively solid – which is more than a lot of the other top teams in the country can say. No one will be able to steel a win off of the Huskies, who seem incapable of having a bad game, nor will the top teams have an easy time pulling away: remember, this is the group who handed Colorado one of their four losses, and they pushed UMass to universe point in the New England regional final. With a sometimes shaky Oregon side at the top of the pool and, in UC Santa Cruz, a team entering Nationals on a similar trajectory, there is an opportunity for Northeastern to do something great.

 

Georgia Jojah

As we continue down the Pool of Nightmares, we reach perhaps the scariest low-seed in the tournament, an iteration of Jojah that you can’t help wonder have more potential to show this weekend than we have seen from them during the season.

The Southeast champions, like Texas, have entrenched themselves in the bracket lately, with six consecutive appearances – which means that there is some ingrained knowledge in the program about what it takes to have a successful Nationals. They also, despite having graduated a battalion on key contributors, can put up top talent to match with anyone in the division. It starts with 2024 Callahan winner Aidan Downey, even more explosive and unconventional than ever in his sixth (and final) year. He’s flanked by three dynamos: Jack Krugler, Cole Chanler, and Scotty Whitley. When the four of them – plus Sam Rose and Jacob Croskey – are cooking, they can be hard to stop.

Other times, they can’t seem to get out of their own way, and they attempt weaves of deep shots doomed for failure. Every team will make mistakes, but the best teams have secondary and tertiary options ready. There have been a few too many moments in 2025 when it’s not clear where Jojah can turn when their front four start to stumble. The depth is a work in progress, and throughout most of the spring it appeared that the fifteen or so players who fall under that heading might not be really ready for the highest level of play until next season.

Jojah proved that they could rise to the moment in the Southeast Regional final, though. Under tremendous pressure from Georgia Tech Tribe, they held on to claim the region’s only spot at Nationals. It was a nervy, concerted effort, and it brings them into Memorial Day Weekend on a high. A performance like that could keep their bracket streak alive.

 

Western Washington DIRT

Everyone – truly, everyone – is excited to see how DIRT handle the program’s second ever trip to Nationals.³ Writing from a preseason perspective, they are the most out-of-left-field qualifiers of the year. But the spring revealed them to be more than worthy of the tournament. Their consistent wins and close losses against Nationals-level competition proved beyond a doubt that they are at least a force to be reckoned with, and possibly an overwhelming force. Could they be the rare pool 5-seed to climb up to bracket play?

Perhaps. Two of the three teams ahead of them, Georgia and Northeastern, have not played above DIRT’s level to a noticeable extent. And a third, UC Santa Cruz, only beat them 13-11… in a game when Western Washington were without first-year phenom Cedar Hines, who, like some other players in the Stanford Invite field, were away for U24 tryouts.

The disc often runs through three main drink-stirrers for DIRT, Hines, Elijah Diamond, and Zoli Ishikawa-Szabo. Hines and Diamond, Seattle Sockeye teammates during the club season, have brought over vital institutional knowledge from Sockeye to dirt, as well as a cellarful of backfield chemistry that never seems to go stale. Ishikawa-Szabo played at their level on offense in a breakout season, and a disciplined, athletic roster around them have shown more than flashes of greatness. If there’s a Cinderella story that could play out at this year’s Nationals, look for Western Washington at the ball.

Pool C

Teams: #1 Colorado Mamabird, #6 Cal Poly SLO SLOCORE, #12 Cal Ursa Major, #18 UBC Thunderbirds, #25 Michigan MagnUM
Overall Strength: 💪💪
Star Power: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Upset Alert: 🚨🚨🚨

Colorado Mamabird

No team in college ultimate has tracked a more linear upward trajectory throughout the season than Mamabird. The 2024 semifinalists – you may remember their valiant effort in a downpour against eventual champions Brown – have been methodically building to a peak since the fall. Classic City Classic saw them spread touches, evaluate potential roles, and throw rookies into the deep end in Darkside-esque⁴ fashion, sacrificing meaningless results for the sake of the process. Presidents’ Day Invite (Mamabird’s annual debut) provided an occasion to set basic standards for true competitive play and fine-tune some personnel decisions. Smoky Mountain Invite was the chance to feel a full weekend of Nationals-caliber competition. And Easterns? Easterns was for winning. They took the tournament in high style, riding a nervy second half against UNC and a smashing first half against UMass to close out an undefeated weekend.

The more ballyhooed side of the ball has been their O-line. It features four members of Mamabird’s vaunted junior class: downfield powerhouse Nanda Min-Fink, savvy backfielder Ryan Shigley, and pair of last season’s D-line playmakers Zeke Thoreson and Tucker Kalmus. They are joined by Callahan nominee Levi Tapper, whose field-expanding arsenal of throws can be inconsistent but whose field-expanding prowess as a receiver has a tidal quality in both reliability and importance.

Min-Fink, one of the 2025 captains, explained the construction of it in elegantly succinct terms. “We just kind of wanted the O-line to be untouchable,” he said. “We have a lot of our best guys, our best cutters in space… it’s not like some other team can come down on us and say ‘We can just poach off of these guys and dog these other guys.’ You gotta be worried about every single player on the line. Absolutely no weaknesses was the idea.”

And of course, there is second-year Tobias Brooks. Brooks established a monumental baseline of gravity in the division in his rookie season, and his sophomore campaign has already eclipsed it. While it is debatable whether he is the best player in the division, it is not debatable that he is in the debate.

“It’s pretty sick [having Brooks as a teammate],” said Shigley. “You sit back and you watch. If he’s throwing to you, you just run under it… he really rises to the moment.”

It was the D-line, however, who  powered their pair of Easterns trophy wins. That unit got off to a poor start at Pres Day, particularly on offensive possessions: there were times when drops seemed as common as catches. Whatever ailed them, then, though, has been more than cured. Behind some fantastic pressure from the likes of Sam Kilgore, Ezra Thoreson, and Curtis Pakgross they’ve begun to collect possessions like trading cards, and the capable handling of Daniel Williams, Axel Hartzog, and rookie sensation™ Elliot Hawkins ushers them into the end zone more often than not. They run two lines deep before crossing over O-line players.

If the offense lives up to its talent level and the defense plays with the same unrelenting energy that gave them the Easterns crown, we could see a championship out of this iteration of Mamabird.

“The outcome goal is Win Nationals,” said Min-Fink.

One thing you won’t see? The team’s traditional gold jersey. The university’s current branding standards – and strict enforcement, which cost Mamabird a week of practice last season when they found themselves in violation of them — have eliminated it from the wardrobe. They’ve sewn their crests onto a decidedly alien (for ‘Bird) white in 2025. While the players are understandably downbeat about losing a vital connection to the program’s history, a silver lining has emerged.

“The whites are fire,” said Shigley. “We’re undefeated in the whites.”

 

Cal Poly SLO SLOCORE

After their thrilling run to the final last season, Cal Poly SLO entered this season as title contenders with a clear need for younger players to step into bigger roles. “That’s part of what makes college ultimate so special,” Max Gade said. “You have to go through that journey every single year. People are going to find themselves in new roles, people are developing as players, and that’s what makes it really special–that journey.”

Throughout the season, SLO got the chance to experiment and find the best roles for their versatile players. Hayden King stepped into a quarterback role for the D-line after playing offense for much of last season. Oliver Faase is becoming a deadly finisher for the offense, and Alex Yannelli leveled up his defensive game to take on the toughest matchups. The team got experience at Stanford Invite playing without Kyle Lew, Anton Orme, and Alex Nelson while that star trio was at a U24 training camp. Their absence made room for other players to step into bigger roles and reduce the reliance on the top end of the roster.

For those top players too, this season has been a journey of finding their own distinct play style. “For me a big challenge this year was not trying to fit into the same shoes of the people who came before me,” Kyle Lew said. “It’s been a mental journey for me to find my own play style and find my own strengths while knowing that we had such a strong center handle presence last year with Calvin [Brown]…throughout the season I’ve learned how to play to my strengths and be just as effective in my own way in that specific role and I’m sure others on the team can relate to that sentiment–stepping into a new role doesn’t mean you have to play in the same way as those who played the role before you.”

One clear measuring stick to showcase the growth of this team will be their pool play game against Colorado Mamabird. In addition to their matchups at 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2024 Nationals, ‘CORE played Colorado twice this season but has yet to come away with a win. “Always love a chance for a rematch,” Alex Nelson said. “We lost to Colorado twice this season, so I’m very excited to face them again.”

 

California Ursa Major

Now firmly established as a Nationals program, Cal enters Nationals looking to get back to the bracket and send off Callahan nominee Dexter Clyburn with a performance worthy of his illustrious career.

With Clyburn at the helm, Cal will nearly always have the best player on the field, and a chance to win their game. That being the case, Ursa Major is anything but a one-person show. Bernard Wang and Eric Johnson each stepped up into critical roles on offense. Aditya Vunnum has taken on a prominent throwing role and is especially adept at moving the disc off the sideline with lefty release points. Downfield, Robert McCabe is somehow still an underrated deep threat.

Cal’s wins over Colorado, UBC, and Northeastern demonstrate their Nationals pedigree and offer a lot of intrigue ahead of pool play rematches. The CalZone is as fearsome as ever and in the crucible of Nationals, it can be hard for opponents to weather the physical and mental pressure that stringing together long possessions point after point brings.

One interesting note. Ridge Huang has been suspended by USA Ultimate for a code of conduct issue and will miss all of pool play. Should Cal make it out to the bracket, having a rested center handler to step in will surely be a benefit, but their path out of pool play got significantly harder without Huang’s power throwing ability and tireless effort to get open for reset cuts. With a deep team and plenty of Nationals experience, Cal’s range of outcomes extends into the bracket, but without one of their primary throwers for their first four games, it’s possible that those might be the only four games that matter for this edition of Ursa Major.

 

British Columbia Thunderbirds

“To be honest, I don’t think a lot of us expected to make Nationals at the beginning,” UBC captain Justin Luna said. “Even just during hearing some conversations with some of my teammates were like, we’re having a little bit of struggles at Ofudg. We weren’t really stringing together as many passes as we expected.” Game by game and tournament by tournament, UBC grew into a team that not only qualified for Nationals but can reasonably to expect to win some games there too. For much of the season, UBC played like a bubble team would be expected to; they lost to the teams ranked above them and beat the teams ranked below them. By the time Northwest Challenge and the series rolled around though, the Thunderbirds were turning those competitive losses into close wins, and they scraped by the game-to-go to earn their place back at Nationals for the first time since 2017.

“One of the biggest things I noticed from this year compared to years past, is that this team just loves to grind,” Luna continued, “like they love the competition. They love to play hard offensively and especially defensively.” One- or two-point games that UBC might have lost in previous seasons turned into wins this year, and Luna credits a more competitive practice culture.

“We have a huge rookie class of like, 12 to 13 guys,” he explained, “and they come into practice wanting to show themselves and prove themselves to the coaches and the veterans and the vets have to respond in likewise fashion. We can’t just let the rookies just stomp all over us. It just helps that we just had a really competitive environment from the day one that sort of continued on to this moment in time.”

UBC’s gritty competitiveness won them important games, but also made headlines for the wrong reasons. There has been plenty of chatter around the Ultiworld Discord and what’s left of ultimate Twitter X calling UBC cheaters, and the team has built a reputation for making calls that opponents find unfair in the moment. “The chatter on the internet,” Luna said, “I think it’s warranted. I mean, teams love to hate UBC, and I think it’s fair. We’ve built that reputation as a team that plays very physical and a team that plays quite rough, but I don’t think it’s outside of the norm of regular Frisbee. I think other teams have played just as rough with us, have made just as bad calls, but we just tend to get a bit more of a worse rep for it. It’s not undeserved, but I don’t think we’ve done anything super crazy out of the norm.” With observers on hand for most games at college Nationals, opponents can rest assured that there will be a neutral third party to adjudicate contested calls, but even someone who makes 100 bad calls might get the 101st right, so UBC’s opponents should also be ready to consider the reality of the game more than any perceived reputation the team brings to the field.

That being said, it’s clear that UBC is willing to be the villain in Seattle “I would just love to go in and just ruin a team’s day and not let them make bracket,” Luna said.

 

Michigan MagnUM

As the top team in the Great Lakes for the sixth season running, Michigan had the luxury of using the regular season for growth and development before making their annual run at Nationals.

With two-time defending club champion Aaron Bartlett firmly in the offensive drivers seat, MagnUM should be able to find an open cutter with ease. James Hill is one of the most fearsome defenders at the field site and can bail out an offense in a pinch too. Filip Icev, Jose Dasilva, and Tobey Chang all play important roles, but the real strength of this team is that they do not have any truly weak links. Without the pressure to earn a bid, Michigan had the luxury of giving their younger players plenty of playing time against high quality competition. Players like Julius Cohen took on a ton of throwing reps that might have been reserved for more experienced players had Michigan needed to prioritize their ranking algorithm points ahead of the individual growth and development of the players on their roster.

Now, in May, more players on the team are more confident and comfortable playing high-level ultimate and MagnUM won’t be exclusively reliant on Bartlett, Hill, and Icev to score every point and get every block the way a team with just a few household names might be. Sure, some of this is the benefit of playing for a strong program from a big school in a strong region, but it is also the result of intentional team building and strong coaching from a team that perennially overachieves.

During a season in which it really feels like the gap between the top tier and bottom tier of teams is thin, there’s little to stop Michigan from making another surprise bracket run. With a full complement of players ready to make a difference, Michigan is a dangerous bottom seed that can absolutely upend a top team’s weekend.

 

Pool D

Teams: #5 Carleton CUT, #2 UNC Darkside, #16 WashU Contra, #21 Penn State Spank, Ottawa Gee-Gees
Overall Strength: 💪💪
Star Power: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Upset Alert: 🚨🚨🚨

Carleton CUT

A year after their most disappointing Nationals in recent memory, Carleton CUT reloaded with one of the best rookie classes of all time, and spent all season among the top of our power rankings. Nate De Morgan, Thomas Shope, Ellis Newhouse, Axel Olson, and Charlie Bitler are all difference makers and instant-impact starters for the championship contender. Sophomore Ryan duSaire is playing his first full season after sitting out last year with an injury. That group has all found their names among our awards shortlist, and I haven’t even mentioned the team’s veteran stars like Declan Miller, Cullen Baker, and Daniel Chen. 

The challenge for this CUT team is putting all of the pieces together. With so much talent and so many stars used to being the centerpieces of their youth teams, this season has been a big experiment trying to find the best roles for so much talent and managing the sacrifices each player has to make to help the entire team function at its peak. The upshot is that anyone can be a takeover star at any moment, and that is incredibly hard to gameplan for. CUT lost just three times all season–close games against UMass, Oregon, and Colorado. Wins over SLO, Oregon, Oregon State, and UMass demonstrate CUT’s championship bonafides. 

The Carleton offense is among the best in the college game. With the ability to attack from multiple areas of the field, defending CUT’s attack takes a coordinated team effort. When their D-line gets the disc, expect De Morgan to look straight to the end zone. His left arm is less a cannon and more a high-tech precision rocket launcher, and his powerful hucks have turned into quick breaks for a D-line that can wreck opponents’ game plans in an instant.

There is no doubt that CUT has the talent necessary to win a title. The questions surrounding this team involve their ability to put all of the pieces together and survive the pressure-cooker that Nationals can be. Especially with many Seattle products (Miller, Chen, Olson, Fin Fuhrmann) dotting the roster, this tournament should attract quite a few fans. With so many eyes on the on-field product, will CUT deliver another title for the storied program, or a dud similar to last season’s 0-4 performance?

 

North Carolina Darkside

For ten straight seasons, UNC Darkside made it to the semifinal round of College Nationals, winning five titles in that span. Darkside is hoping to add a sixth this weekend. The perennial title contenders are once again ranked near the top of the division, and while they were not perfect this regular season, they won four of the six tournaments they played in and have the talent and pedigree to fly back from Seattle with a trophy. “I have so much confidence in our team,” Josh Singleton said. “When we have shown up the way that I know we can, we’re just very, very good and very dangerous. I think the challenge for us is going to be trying to show up in every moment. And that’s hard to do over a, you know, hopefully seven game tournament.”

Earlier this season, Darkside’s focus briefly slipped and they lost an early season matchup to Georgia Tech. “We really appreciate Georgia Tech coming to [Carolina Kickoff],” Grayson Trowbridge said. “We love the competition, so we’re really excited to have some more competition earlier in the season. It definitely was a great way to start the season, I would say, a little wake up call, a reminder that we’re really going to have to put in the work this year to improve as a team and as a group in order to reach the goals that we’re looking towards.”

Darkside had not lost Carolina Kickoff since 2015, and the jolt of a shocking loss was enough to help the team realize it needed to find ways for undersung players to step up. “When I was a sophomore and freshman, it sort of felt like that everyone else could do their job, and we would just see success,” Sam Redinbo said. “But this year, everyone would have to step up that much more and work that much harder to see the on field success that we’ve seen in previous years.”

One specific player to highlight is graduate transfer and overall X-Factor Matt Barcellos. A do-everything centerpiece for four seasons at UCLA, Barcellos could fill a number of roles on Darkside, and they basically let him try them all. “At one tournament we’ve got him playing D line as a driver. In another tournament, we’ve got him as a field cutter on O,” Ben Dameron explained. “We’re asking him to do all these different things to kind of see what would be best for him, and he just excels in every place that we put him.” Whatever Darkside needs at Nationals, Barcellos will certainly be a candidate to get the job done. Between him, a World Games-level Dameron, an All-Region (and All-American candidate) level season from Singleton, and the somehow still slept-on Seth Fried, Darkside have everything they need to compete for another title.

 

Washington University Contra

Another year, another trip to Nationals for WashU. Much as they did in 2024, Contra started their 2025 season with a bang at Florida Warm Up – riding the high all the way to semis this time around – and then playing the algorithmic game to perfection to ensure they had a seat at the table when bids were finalized.

They’re plenty athletic, and they often play a high-flying brand of ultimate that is pleasing to watch. Joel Brown has his pick of targets in Cam Freeman, Ben Reimler, and first-year Mitchell O’Keeffe. The defense is anchored by two of the springiest players in the division, Nic Sprague and Noah Stovitz. There’s an argument to be made that Sprague, Stovitz, and Freeman would all be on an All-Hops line. Elie Weitzman, Seth Fisher-Olvera, and Nicholas Jeschke are highly effective without being quite as flashy.

If that doesn’t sound like a very dangerous group – 1.) It is, you just don’t know all the names yet; 2.) Ask Texas. Contra didn’t wait to make Nationals in the elimination game at South Central Regionals, they went out and took it from a tournament regular to the tune of 13-7, leaving Texas to scramble for the final spot. It was a monumental result. We’ll won’t know how they would have fared against Colorado in the final; the poor field conditions meant that the game was canceled. It’s unlikely, but not at all inconceivable, that they would have won the SC crown.

With one solid Nationals performance under their belts last season, they can stretch their legs a little for 2025. They know the ins and outs of preparation, the schedule, and the effort they’ll get from other teams. They know each other a year better. They have a tremendous ceiling and, if the work they’ve put in out of the spotlight since Florida Warm Up can help them remain at a high level game in and game out (which we haven’t quite seen from them yet), they could have the floor to make a big splash.

Penn State Spank

Penn State lived up to their promise last season, making Nationals for the first time in ages. This season, they played a tougher schedule with higher expectations, and they return to Nationals with a different set of expectations than last year’s happy-to-be-here team.

“The last three years, the goal has always been to build on the prior season,” captain Doug Hoyer said. “And every year we have a meeting where we write our goals out and what we want to accomplish as a team…Making Nationals last year, we definitely wanted to do that this year. But also, we want to strive for something greater than 0-4 in pool play at Nationals. The two goals that we had were to win the region, something that we’ve never done before, or at least haven’t done in a long time, and then also make the bracket in nationals.”

Despite sometimes lackluster results, Penn State were confident in what they were building. “We love to build little goals, so that we see steps in progress along the way,” captain Zander Lutz said. “So that could be just winning a practice, winning a tournament like or just winning games at a tournament, and seeing those marginal improvements so that we understand how much better we’re getting along the course of the season. So now, after making nationals, it’s not, ‘oh, we made nationals.’ It’s back to the drawing board. Where do we want to be when we finish nationals? So it’s that consistent, like striving for getting better, I think is what’s really helped our team out.”

Rather than stacking lines looking for the best algorithm scores, Spank developed their depth throughout the season. They were able to play two distinct D-lines throughout the season, and gave minutes to a dozen or so players for significant offensive minutes. “We really just needed to prioritize ourselves, prioritize our game and, like, developing our team, because we couldn’t really worry about a lot of the outside stuff, like if we were going to get a second bid,” said captain Kyle Incollingo. At Regionals, the team came together and vanquished their recent rival Pitt. As the sole representative from the Ohio Valley region, Penn State is turning over a new competitive page in their program as they seek to become the premier program in their region and a mainstay at Nationals. With a full roster of players ready to make a difference, Spank is hoping to pull off an upset and find their way into a bracket appearance for the first time in the modern era.

 

Ottawa Gee-Gees

Another year, another trip to Nationals for the Metro East’s least popular team. Over the past couple of seasons, they have perfected a formula for getting into the bad graces of the Cornells, the SUNY-Buffalos, the UConns, the Columbias, and the Rutgerses of the world: pretty much ignore the regular season in the US, show up to Western NY Conferences with a bone-thin roster calibrated to play just well enough to make it to the next round of the postseason, and then bring the full complement down to Metro East Regionals to flick away the competition like so many pillbugs. They beat an aspiring Cornell Buds side 15-8 in the regional final.

The fact that they pulled off the same trick a year later is even more impressive when you consider they did it without the near-untouchable World Games shortlister Marty Gallant. Logan Keillor, Maxime Ayad, Samuel Tremblay-Larochelle and the rest of the Gee-Gees proved more than capable of running it back. That said, it’s not clear how much damage they’ll be able to do in Burlington. What’s their potential this year? Without getting too pessimistic, the 2024 team went 0-5 with an average margin of loss of 4.25 goals. Anything better than that, or even right around that mark, should be considered a win for 2025, and possibly a signal that the program has staying power. Theo Gobeil and Noah Berube are interesting pieces to build around for the next time they put their nefarious Metro East plan into action.

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1. tied with Georgia Jojah ↩

2. The University of Vermont is located in Burlington, Vermont ↩

3. They last qualified for the tournament in 2015. ↩

4. Darksidean? Darksiduous? Darksidular? ↩