The best players in the mixed division right now

October 4, 2025 by Ultiworld in Opinion

There’s no shortage of talent in the USA Ultimate Club mixed division. We look a lot at team success, and often see familiar names and faces in those discussions. But who are the best individual players? Who brings the most value to winning a championship? Figuring out which stars shine the brightest is more art than science, but perhaps there’s democratic power in numbers.

So who are the best players in the division right now? To try to clear away as much of the white noise created by circumstance as possible and get to the heart of each individual’s value and contribution, we asked members of our coverage team, as well as an anonymous group of elite players, to weigh in on the following prompt:

If you were starting a club team today with the singular goal of winning a theoretical Club Championship this October, how would you rank the players within the division? You aren’t building a team of all of your selections, so don’t worry about how the players complement each other. Consider each pick the first pick of a team, drafting in order, only you can’t pick the players you’ve already ranked above. All players who were on a 2025 USA Ultimate Club mixed division roster of a team that reached regionals are eligible to be drafted. With regards to injuries and absences, we will include all rostered players unless there is confirmation a player will not be competing, or would not be able to compete, at Nationals.

In order to improve how representative our rankings are of the opinions of our voters, we have iterated until arriving at this process. We each listed out our top 35 players to iron out some of the gradations on the fringes and then combined our lists to create a composite ranking. In addition, we included the ballots of a few anonymous elite players and coaches from different teams and regions, and for the first time, our subscribers have also contributed their thoughts. We used a weighted scoring system for votes, with Participants’ Ballots counting as 60% of the value of Staff Ballots, and Subscriber Ballots counting as 30% of the value of Staff Ballots.¹

We’ll start with our top 10, and discussion about that group. Then we’ll reveal the entire top 25 for our subscribers, followed by the complete ballots, and additional conversations about the rankings.

Staff Voters

Charlie Eisenhood (Editor-in-Chief)
Graham Gerhart (Senior Staff Writer)
Josh Katz (Staff Writer)
Laura Osterlund (Staff Writer)
Keith Raynor (Senior Editor)
Alex Rubin (Senior Staff Writer)

The Top 10

Overall Rank	Player Name	Ranking Pts.	Josh Katz	Alex Rubin	Laura Osterlund	Graham Gerhart	Keith Raynor	Charlie Eisenhood	Participants (11)	Subscribers (6)
1	Jolie Krebs	2951.5	6	3	1	2	1	1	1	1
2	Tannor Johnson-Go	2697	3	4	6	3	4	4	2	4
3	Nathan Champoux	2622.8	1	1	2	1	3	2	9	9
4	Rachel Mast	2562.5	13	2	4	7	5	5	3	2
5	Robyn Fennig	2503.1	2	16	3	5	2	3	5	6
6	Khalif El-Salaam	2140.6	5	18	11	4	8	9	7	18
7	Caleb Denecour	2035.7	12	7	8	9	12	8	12	12
8	Travis Dunn	1903.5	22	9	9	11	17	10	8	41
9	Yuge Xiao	1857.5	9	5	14	14	20	11	13	48
10	Lindsay McKenna	1835.2	10	10	17	10	11	6	18	30

[Editor: There may be some sorting issues with the table that cannot be altered at the time. Our apologies for the inconvenience.]

There have been big changes at the top of the mixed division from 2024 to 2025. Only one player, Robyn Fennig (5), has carried over from last year’s top 5. Two players have made the leap from the back end of the 2024 ballot. What have Jolie Krebs (1) and Rachel Mast (4) shown you this season that gave them such a big launch? And how did you decide where to rank them in comparison with last year’s Player of the Year finalists, Nathan Champoux (3) and Tannor Johnson-Go (4)?

Laura Osterlund (Staff Writer): Both Krebs and Mast have shown this season, more than last year, their abilities to take control of the game when they’re on the field — and yielding results. For Jolie Krebs specifically, she’s playing a more dominant game as an O-line hybrid. At US Open, she went every other with very few mistakes. And I see that more in her than anyone else I ranked this time. She’s been consistent and is doing just about everything.

Keith Raynor (Senior Editor): Laura’s spot on, especially about Jolie Krebs. She’s got gravity. She pulls the game to her and you have to play her way most of the time. That’s why she stands out in such an obvious way and is climbing everyone’s estimation and getting World Games hype and all of that.

Mast has been dominant this season, and I think it is because she has so many avenues to having a big impact. She can be a high touch offensive operator, a playmaking defender, an elusive goal-scorer. And she does it at a high clip. She just makes her mark on every game.

I had Jolie #1, trailed by Robyn Fennig, another high gravity, high touch player, and then Champoux, Johnson-Go, and Mast. The hole in Mast’s game is that she is pretty turnover-prone for someone with her touch volume.’

Alex Rubin (Senior Staff Writer): First, the premise of the question is wrong because we missed in not having Champoux ranked higher last season, but I’ll let that slide.

Edward Stephens (Club Editor): Champoux was ranked sixth last year, so I think the premise of the question is fine.

Alex: Nope, he should’ve been ranked higher.

Edward: …

Alex: No player has impressed me as much with their growth this season than Krebs. Like Keith said, the game just comes so naturally to her, and it’s clear how much her teammates and coaches trust her to make positive plays both in and outside of structure.

For Mast, I think her improvement is just a product of playing another season with the same team and building really good rapport with her teammates. I’m not sure she unlocked any new particular skill, but her teammates know how she likes to play and are able to highlight her skills more than anyone could last season.

As for Champoux and Johnson-Go… I know this exercise is about this season, but I can’t get last season’s championship game matchup out of my head. Champoux won it. Skunk has to be ranked ahead of TJG after that.

Which player or players in your top 10 do you think should have been in a lot more top 10s? Which player or players in other people’s top 10s do you think are a bit inflated?

Laura: Gonna be honest, y’all are overlooking Maketa Mattimore (19) and Emma Piorier (UR). They both play similar roles on their respective teams: spark plugs who always make the difficult catches and score goals. Perhaps they’re overshadowed by the depth of their respective teams, but if either player was on a team with a bit less star power, they’d be in the top 10 of everyone’s list in my opinion.

Josh Katz (Staff Writer): Alex, I hate to call you out, because I really respect you and your writing, but what the heck is up with your ballot? Robyn Fennig at 15? Khalif El-Salaam (6) at 18? They’re both easily top 5-caliber players in the division, top 10 at minimum.

Alex: I’m sure I’m a bit too low on Fennig and El-Salaam but I am now fully subscribed to the Emmet Holton Theory that the entire Southwest mixed scene is bad, and they got a bit of a drop off from that. If I were redoing my list, I’d probably keep El-Salaam in the same place relative to where he is with the MMPs. I’d move Fennig to my 7th or 8th spot ahead of Lindsay McKenna (10) and Rory Veldman (21) who are both very good but not quite as dynamic as throwers as Fennig.

Josh: As for my own top 10, I think the Krebs effect has made a lot of people forget how good Sadie Jezierski (17) is. She’s not the flashiest player and doesn’t put up gaudy stat totals, but she’s constantly in the right position and always doing the right things. Seeing her in the 20s on some ballots (looking at you, Subscribers) hurt my soul.

Keith: In what world is Sadie Jezierski not flashy!?

Edward: She might actually be the flashiest player.

Josh: Okay, okay. ‘Not the flashiest,’ was probably a poor choice of words on my part, but the gist of it holds up. The common talking point for XIST’s success this year has been Krebs this and Krebs that and while Jolie is an incredible player, Sadie is right up there with her in terms of impact.

Graham Gerhart (Senior Staff Writer): I know people haven’t seen a ton of Mile High Trash footage, but the disrespect for Ari Nelson (UR) is wild. They’re easily a top 15 player. There’s a reason Trash have an elite offense: it’s because of players like Nelson.

To not even have a single MHT player in our top 25 is close to malpractice.

Scott Dunham (Data Analyst): Disrespect for MHT may be somewhat understandable, as they underperformed in streamed games, going 0-3 vs 17-3 otherwise (8-1) regular season. That being said, at least three Trash players deserve serious top 25 consideration. Riley Kirkman-Davis (UR) was a huge addition, Nelson has seriously elevated their game this year, and how can everyone have overlooked perennial WUL MVP contender and highlight machine Abby Thorpe (UR)?

Alex: I’m surprised that we as a voting collective are so down on Cheryl Hsu (20). She finished 11th last season and didn’t get worse! She is a very poised thrower who can get open in the backfield with the best of them. Of course, BFG won’t be relying on her to win a championship this season, but I would.

How did you square a team’s season results to date with where you ranked some of their best players? One good test case: Khalif El-Salaam’s new club California Burrito had a very good regular season but fell short of making Nationals; Travis Dunn (8) of Lawless did make Nationals, but only after a subpar regular season. What is it about these players (or others) that makes you want to set those results aside from the rankings?

Josh: At this point, I think I’m just the resident Travis Dunn Hater, given this is back-to-back years I’ve been much lower on him than the rest of the ballots. I value consistency quite a bit in this exercise, and Lawless (and by extension Dunn, with how much he drives them) were quite down this year. Props to them for turning it on when it mattered, but that’s gonna lead to a lower placement here.

Keith: I found myself really struggling with that this season, with all the regionals upsets. I’ve made this argument in other years, but how can we say Khalif El-Salaam is one of the optimal players to lead you to a mixed championship this season when he couldn’t lead his team to a second-place finish at Southwest Regionals? Sure, run back the sim on regionals 10x and Khalif is probably bringing Burrito through more often than not, but life is a sample size of one. We have the pure evidence that, in 2025, he wasn’t the player to do that.

Now, ultimate is a team sport, and a player can’t score by themselves.² We have years of evidence of what Khalif — and by extension, other Regionals flameouts — can do, so it isn’t entirely dispositive. But I did have to hand out dings to Khalif and the entire BFG contingent. And Mischief ended up off the list entirely.

Graham: The exercise wasn’t asking me to rank players based on team performance, so I tried to focus on the players that had a major impact regardless of how their team performed. Even though Burrito fell short of their goals for the year, El-Salaam was an absolute monster for them on offense all year long. I don’t think I saw a single player ‘shut him down’ although there were a few that were good at limiting him. Dunn and Johnson-Go were very much in the same boat for me, too.

I think I docked Dunn in the end because, when thinking of building a team around a player, the likes of Johnson-Go, El-Salaam, and Krebs are just a little closer to their peak.

The Top 25 and Beyond

Top 25

1. Jolie Krebs (XIST)
2. Tannor Johnson-Go (Sprocket)
3. Nathan Champoux (Hybrid)
4. Rachel Mast (Hybrid)
5. Robyn Fennig (Tower)
6. Khalif El-Salaam (Burrito)
7. Caleb Denecour (Drag’n Thrust)
8. Travis Dunn (Lawless)
9. Yuge Xiao (Slow)
10. Lindsay McKenna (AMP)
11. Jade McLaughlin (Shame)
12. Conor Belfield (BFG)
13. Mika Kurahashi (BFG)
14. Dalton Smith (Hybrid)
15. Joey Wylie (Disco Club)
16. Aaron Bartlett (Hybrid)
17. Sadie Jezierski (XIST)
18. Allan Laviolette (BFG)
19. Maketa Mattimore (Hybrid)
20. Cheryl Hsu (BFG)
21. Rory Veldman (Shame)
22. Matty Russell (Shame)
23. Chagall Gelfand (Drag’n Thrust)
24. Axel Agami Contreras (XIST)
25. Claire Revere (Toro)

Full Voting & Discussion

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1. Our experience has shown that participants’ ballots trend towards regional concentrations and emphasizing the strength of their teammates, as well as other quirks such as occasionally not ranking themselves or hate-ranking rivals, which is why their ballots are weighted in this manner. ↩

2. Excluding Zeppelin Raunig. ↩