On the twelfth day of Christmas Ultiworld gave to me... more reasons to get hype for the 2026 college season!
December 23, 2025 by Ultiworld in Preview
Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2026 college 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.
It’s time to unwrap some presents as we conclude the 12 Days of College Ultimate. Over the 12 days, we will be releasing one gift per day, though don’t count on getting any holiday fowl: it’s all college ultimate. From highlight videos to player chatter to a season predictions, we’ve got a little something for everyone.
Rounding out the 12 Days of College Ultimate, our reporters present the things they’re most excited about for the 2026 season!
1. We’re Going Back To Rockford!
If there’s a way to embed the music in here, we should; I think it’s the finest thing AI has ever produced and maybe the only AI-generated content I feel good about appearing on this site. Get me the sheet music and I’ll perform a live rendition at halftime of one of the finals. Jokes aside, I really like ultimate tournaments in Rockford, Illinois. The field complex is excellent and we’re all going to love having a stadium on site. The drive from Chicago is not that bad (certainly better than the drive from Sea-Tac to the fields last spring) and everything from hotels to food is more affordable in the hardy Midwest town that about 150,000 people call home.
The last time a major event was in Rockford, everyone was miserable because Club Nationals took place in October. The weather in late May should be significantly better than the raining mid-50s wind we endured back in 2016, but the ultimate should be just as good as that all-timer of a tournament. There’s a reason many Midwest area Ultimate organizations return to Rockford for key tournaments each season, and if everything goes well this year, I’d be happy to add Rockford to a regular rotation of sites that USA Ultimate can return to every few years (for what it’s worth, I’d add the sites in Burlington, WA; Mason, OH; Norco, CA; and Madison, WI to that list).
– Alex Rubin
2. Roosevelt’s Rookie of the Year Race
The 2026 Rookie of the Year shortlist in the Women’s division has to start with a pair of former high school teammates in Chloe Hakimi and ZsaZsa Gelfand. It feels like we’ve been waiting forever for Hakimi to make her college debut, such is the impact she’s made on the club circuit and with youth national teams. She’s following the very traditional Seattle to Carleton College pipeline and should fit in perfectly alongside Chagall Gelfand, Naomi Fina, and the rest of Syzygy. I’m already salivating over the first Hakimi power-backhand huck to a wide open Fina.
ZsaZsa, meanwhile, is eschewing the northern pipeline to forge a new tunnel down the Pacific coastline, ditching Carleton (and the chance to play with her older sister) for a potential rising power in Cal Poly SLO SLOmotion. SLOmotion made Nationals for the first time in program history last spring, and upset UNC Pleiades on the way to a bracket appearance once they got there. Gelfand will step in alongside Poppy DeArmond-McLeod as the newest Southwest superstar duo as they try to take SLOmotion to yet further heights in 2026. Tracking Hakimi’s and Gelfand’s respective impacts this spring for two vastly different programs will make for one of the most hotly contested awards races of the season.
– Josh Katz
3. The Sophomore Smash
You’ve heard of the sophomore slump, but is anybody expecting last year’s stellar rookie class to do anything but rise up as foundational pieces in their respective divisions? Rowan Lymp, Milo Brown, Sam Grossberg, Elliot Hawkins, Brayden Morrison, Ella Widmyer, Lauren Szeto-Fung, Sanam Rozycki-Shah, Dash Brenner, Nate De Morgan, Axel Olsen, Claire Willett, Cedar Hines, Rufus Helmreich, Isabella Pharr — I could keep going. Is it a list of All-Americans or second year players? Porque no los dos?
Many of these names are helping steer teams directly into the title waves of the collegiate ocean. Others are boosting their teams from mere regional glory to national relevance. The era of the 6th year is waning, opening up more usage, more sections of highlight reels, more Spin Ultimate Play of the Weeks — both in on-field production and in-Ultiworld visibility, it is becoming their time to shine. And I’ve got my sunglasses ready.
– Keith Raynor
4. The End of Sixth Year Confusion
May this be the last college season of hearing the same questions over and over: “Does X player have another year of eligibility? Haven’t they been playing college since the 2010s? Are they making up a fake grad program to play more frisbee?” After the spring 2026 college Nationals, hopefully the math will finally start mathing for everyone. That is, back to the standard 5 years of eligibility and just the question of whether or not one will take advantage of a super-senior year, a grad program, or any other extension of the traditional four-year undergrad timeline to play more frisbee.
To be fair, it has been a confusing set of circumstances. Some may think that sixth years are already over, but that depends on how you define it — those who started in the fall of 2021 and played in the Norco college Nationals will technically be playing their sixth college season, but compacted into five academic years. I’m sure players will be relieved to know that their opponents will once again have expected term limits and USAU will be (somewhat) relieved of having to respond to never-ending eligibility confusions1.
– Kiana Hu
5. The Leap
Grudge matches are great, don’t get me wrong. We saw in both the men’s and women’s club play the power and the drama that can come when the same four titans reach semis and start to sort through the previous year’s unfinished business. Rematches, rivalries, and individual nemeses all make for brilliant viewing. So, yeah, it would be awesome in so many ways if a Carleton/Colorado/Oregon/UMass and UBC/Carleton/Vermont/Washington semis day came to pass once again.
But for all that built-in excitement, do you know what I like the most? When a team makes The Leap. It’s that moment when, after years of build-up and hard work, an entire roster breaks through to the highest levels. It’s exhilarating to watch. It happened last year with CUT (seven long years since their previous semis appearance), Ego (same time frame) and Element (they made the final in the 2021 Winter of Hecko but dropped off for three seasons). The sense of collective purpose and confidence was palpable around all three of those squads late in the season, and it creates a beautifully fresh atmosphere totally different from the ‘Business as Usual’ attitude that, for instance, the UNC teams would adopt in tail stages of their salad days.
Who’s going to make the leap in 2026? Everyone’s betting on Oregon Fugue to make it back to semis for the first time since 2016. Tufts EWO might be able to crack through at long last, as well. I’ve got my eye on a pair of California schools, UC Santa Cruz and Cal Poly, as potential Leapers in the women’s division. In men’s, could Michigan or Western Washington or Penn State reach semifinal Saturday? The case is blurrier, but it’s there. It seems like one of them has what it takes to de-throne someone in the been-there-done-that crowd, and I’m here for it.
– Edward Stephens
6. The 10,000 Club
Throughout the history of the D-III division, the enrollment cutoff for eligible schools was 7,500 students. At one point, Ultiworld even had a podcast called the 7500 Club. This offseason, however, USAU changed the requirement for D-III schools with fewer than 10,000 students. This has the potential to be a genuinely exciting change, as it opens the door to new teams in the division, which has been already developing rapidly for the last few years. Solid teams like Alabama-Huntsville, WIlliam & Mary, Minnesota-Duluth, Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and others are now eligible to play in the People’s Division.
Now, we may not see immediate results this year. Some newly eligible teams may not want to make the jump right away and others may need more time to develop into contending sqauds. Still, as the division continually grows stronger, this may convince the on the bubble teams to commit to D-III. It may also empower teams that were once flailing in the D-I Division to become more inclined to improve against meaningful D-III competition. The impacts of this shift from USAU seem unclear for now, but I am excited to see how it shapes the division as a whole in 2025 and beyond.
– Calvin Ciorba
They’re probably just happy it wasn’t a question of 6 or 7 years of eligibility ↩
