Everything you need to know about Thursday’s Pool Play
October 24, 2025 by Josh Katz and Alex Rubin in Recap
Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2025 Club National Championships 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.
SAN DIEGO–It was a beautiful day at the Surf Sports Park as 48 teams across three divisions gathered to showcase the best the sport has to offer.
The mixed division continues to surprise, even when it doesn’t. Mixed pool play produced the fewest upsets across all the divisions — just three! The twelve teams remaining in title contention are thus are familiar blend of the top squads, with two pool four seeds breaking through to prequarters for a little extra spice.
Chalk? In Mixed?
For the first time in what feels like forever, the top four seeds all won their pools after undefeated days. #1 Ann Arbor Hybrid cruised in their rematch with #8 Boston Sprocket to open pool play and never looked particularly bothered on their way to a quarterfinal bye. Hybrid’s statistics are incredibly balanced, and they pass the eye test, too. With so much talent up and down the roster, everyone can find their own small way to contribute to Hybrid’s electrifying season.
#6 New York XIST continued the trend seen in the men’s and women’s divisions of New York teams: winning all their games. Their showcase win over #7 Sacramento Tower was the biggest blowout on that field all day as Jolie Krebs and company move on to the bracket games. Krebs’ audacious inside-out flick huck to close out the game-winning break against #5 Austin Disco Club was just another reminder of her star power.
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In their return to Nationals after a year away, #2 Durham Toro took down perennial qualifiers #9 Boston Slow and overcame challenges from #16 Arizona Lawless and #11 Huntsville Space Force. Years of instability and fluctuating results seem to have been put aside as Toro are living up to their top ranking for now and earned a bye to Friday’s quarterfinal round.
Unlike Toro, #4 Fort Collins shame. have been here and done that for most of the last decade. This time around, they felled #3 Minneapolis Drag’n Thrust in a classic game featuring a typically wild universe point. They also took care of AMP and humbled Conspiracy. The offensive quartet of Simon Montague, Matty Russell, Rory Veldman, and Jade McLaughlin may be the best in the division.
In recent years, the mixed division saw upsets galore and bottom-feeders pushing their way into the stadium games. This year, it seems like the best teams are also the hot teams, and that should set up an exciting and special bracket unlike anything fans have seen in recent memory.1
Pool B Stands for Down Bad
Sacramento Tower should be the feel good story of this Nationals. The young program is bringing together players in an emerging ultimate community, and helping each other push farther and farther towards success than anyone may have expected. After qualifying for Nationals and making the bracket last season, this year was supposed to be Tower’s real coming out party as a top ten team with legitimate championship aspirations.
Their regular season was hampered by key player absences, and Tower finished one point short of earning the Southwest region an additional strength bid to Nationals. No problem — they won the region anyway. Once at Nationals, though, they fell one point short of the bracket, and this time there isn’t anything else to win. Tower closed out their day with a one-point win over #14 Mile High Trash, a young team not unlike Tower, when they needed two points added to their margin of victory to manufacture the right tie-breaking scenario to advance. While Tower will end up in consolation play, their season should still be considered a success.
Post Players Needed! Rebounds Galore
Checking in on a few teams who finished 2024 below their expectations: they’re thriving!
- Toro 14-12 Slow | Game Recap
After a year away from Nationals, Toro look like the real deal again. The multitalented duo of Claire Revere and Claire Bidigare-Curtis reignited the Toro offense, and the return to full health of Grayson Sanner gives the bulls a real trio of threats downfield. With patient backfield players like Player Pierce and Brett Matzuka to steady the team, Toro have all the tools necessary to make a solid bracket run.
- Disco Club 11-9 Tower | Game Recap
If last season was an experiment, this year is the evolution. Disco Club entered this season with a certain set of expectations that comes with being a bracket team at Nationals, and they did enough on Thursday to return at least as far as they got last year. With a win over Tower, Disco Club secured their spot in the bracket and will show up on Friday ready for a new challenge.
- Lawless 15-13 Space Force | Game Recap
Lawless are riding a five-year streak of qualifying for Nationals, but last year’s squad missed the bracket. This year, Lawless return to Friday play after grinding out a win over Space Force. Travis Dunn (4A/2G) and Oliver Artus (3G/2A) provided the statistical inputs needed to carry the offense. Dunn in particular is the singular force around which this team operates. Without his backfield presence, Lawless’ offense would be closer to directionless.
Quick Hits
- Drag’n Thrust won the battle of the legacy programs to finish second in Pool D, turning an 8-7 halftime lead over #15 Philadelphia AMP into a 15-7 win with a second half shutout (Game Recap).
- While not an upset per our Power Rankings, by seed Sprocket upset Rally to earn second billing in Pool A.
- In their first trip to Nationals, Denver Mile High Trash beat regional rivals Disco Club to earn their bracket spot.
That’s all for today’s pool play games, but there’s more on deck. Be sure to catch the game recaps as they’re posted on tomorrow’s live blog, and follow along with the action first-hand by watching tomorrow’s streamed games!
Yes, I realize that’s a ridiculous thing to type about the top four teams winning their pools, but it does feel like a double-digit seed makes semis every year in mixed, and maybe, just maybe, that won’t happen this year…but also it’s mixed so who knows? ↩
