Entering the last weekends of the regular season, which new teams are primed to break through to Nationals?
March 18, 2026 by Aidan Thomas in Opinion
Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2026 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 Line brings together lists of sevens from our reporting staff.
Sometimes, ultimate frisbee feels like the most predictable thing in the world; UNC gets to their umpteenth-straight semifinal, Michigan MagnUM win the Great Lakes, Stanford Superfly make a big Nationals run…you get the picture.
But other times, college ultimate reminds us that the game can be dictated by variable conditions like wind and is played by (mostly) 18-21 year olds who are prone to random mistakes, momentum swings, and more, all of which can contribute to wildly unexpected events. Take last year’s Western Washington DIRT, a team that finished 9th at the 2024 Northwest Regionals, coming all the way to steal a bid at 2025 regionals to earn the 18th seed at Nationals, and from there ran to the quarterfinals. And they were hardly the only Cinderella story in last year’s men’s bracket, with 16-seed Penn State Spank also making quarters.
So while yes, we know many of the favorites that will be playing on Memorial Day Weekend, let’s take a moment and look at seven teams across both divisions that weren’t there last year and could be spoilers in this year’s bracket.
Women’s Division
Western Washington Chaos
Let’s head to the women’s program from the college that ruined brackets in the men’s division last year. Currently ranked #12 in Ultiworld’s power rankings, and 13th in USAU’s rankings, Western Washington is over 100 points inside the bid-earning bubble, bringing a pivotal fifth bid to the Northwest region. Amaya Krutsinger and Alexa Coca lead a talented group that bounced back from an underwhelming pool play at Presidents’ Day Invite, going 0-3, to throttle Utah Spiral Jetty in a crossover game and push #10 UC San Diego to universe in prequarters. Chaos then swept the ninth place bracket, culminating in a 9-8 win over regional rival #13 Oregon Fugue.
Last year, in a five-bid Northwest, Oregon entered as the sixth seed and stole a bid, and Chaos was the team left out, losing two Nationals-clinching opportunities. In 2026, the first goal will be to earn their bid in a cutthroat Northwest region, but for Chaos, they know that brings no guarantee. Their talented roster showcased inconsistency but a high ceiling at PDI, and if that ceiling can become the standard for Chaos, this is a team that could easily find themselves playing a bracket game at Nationals.
Notre Dame Echo
It’s been two straight years of heartbreak for #19 Notre Dame Echo, losing out first on a second bid for the Great Lakes region by the thinnest of margins in both 2024 and 2025, and then, in both years, dropping the game-to-go to Michigan Flywheel in brutally close games. Last year, Echo led 10-7 before surrendering the final five points to Flywheel and seeing their first Nationals trip since 2017 evade their grasp.
This year, Echo have three regular season tournaments on the agenda. However early projections, largely due to underperformances by Michigan, show their bid chances once more coming down to a game-to-go versus Flywheel. The team is anchored by 2025 Club Mixed BPotY Lili Hobday, who plays every point in key games as a center handler and strong defender. Complementary pieces like Mary Larson, the 2024 Great Lakes Rookie of the Year, and fifth-year Emma Baran, alongside an array of other contributors who gained critical experience last year, has this team ready for a Nationals run in 2026.
They went 4-2 at Queen City Tune Up, notably beating then-#19 Virginia Hydra. At Commonwealth Cup, Echo posted a 4-3 record with wins over #24 Georgia and — most crucially — Michigan, holding seed for a third place finish. If Echo repeat their Commonwealth performance and take down Michigan at Great Lakes Regionals, they’re absolutely capable of making a little noise in pool play and finding their way into a bracket game.
UCLA BLU
The women’s division as a whole doesn’t feature a mass quantity of teams that missed out on Nationals last year and feel like they have the ceiling to push for bracket play in 2026. One exception however is #15 UCLA BLU, a Nationals qualifier as recently as 2023. Mya Mitchell and Sabrina Belkin are the stars that have BLU looking competitive against top competition.
Wins over #14 UC Davis, #16 Cal Poly Slo, and UC Santa Barbara are good confidence-boosters ahead of regionals, and competitive losses to #2 UC Santa Cruz, #10 UC San Diego, and #13 Oregon (twice) showcase an ability to stay right with bracket-level teams. But in a stacked Southwest, the bigger challenge may be making Nationals rather than qualifying out of their pool into bracket play.
Men’s Division
Brown Brownian Motion
This one is probably the easy one. The 2024 National Champions had a bit of a rebuilding year in 2025, although they were still very much in contention for Nationals, losing out on a brutally competitive three-bid New England region. Nolan McCloskey had a breakout 2025 season, veteran Jason Tapper has continued to develop into a star, and rookie Owen Erdman added an elite thrower to a roster that is certainly one of the most talented in the country, especially among non-2025 Nationals contenders.
#14 Brown went 7-1 at Florida Warm Up, only losing an absolute windfest to #18 Michigan MagnUM. They took down #9 Pittsburgh En Sabah Nur and handled #15 Texas TUFF to mop up fifth-place, but we missed seeing Brown take on the tournament’s top teams because of that Michigan quarterfinal loss. Smoky Mountain Invite saw Brown take their lumps to the tune of five losses, but they still toppled1 #11 UMass in the ninth-place bracket. The ceiling of this team is arguably as high as anyone outside the top five.
Georgia Tech Tribe
Preseason, this was a no brainer. Then, after a concerningly rough performance at Florida Warm Up, whether #13 Georgia Tech Tribe had the depth beyond the star Grossberg brothers was in doubt. Then, Tribe bounced back with a 6-1 performance at Smoky Mountain Invite (albeit only good enough for ninth due to a universe point prequarters loss to #12 Vermont). Now, we’re kind, sort of, almost back where we started on Tribe?
Adam Grossberg, Sam Grossberg, Stefan McCall (who wasn’t there for the impressive Smoky Mountain Invite performance) and a talented group of contributors are the favorites out of the Southeast. They’ve demonstrated an impressive ceiling with wins over #5 UC Santa Cruz, #9 Pittsburgh, Brown, and UMass, but inconsistency in losses to Georgetown, Northeastern, and even in their prequarters loss to Vermont at SMI. Tribe are definitely a bracket-caliber team, but whether they have the game-in, game-out, high-level play to get there may be the question.
Wisconsin Hodags
Let’s get frisky with this one. Here’s a team with a three-tournament sample size that is looking very strong with a tournament left to play. The key for the 13-2 #20 Wisconsin Hodags is whether they can keep the second bid they hold for the North Central, because nobody is under the impression that they’ll challenge the defending national champions #2 Carleton CUT. That being said, crazier things have happened then bad weather and unpredictable results at North Central Regionals.
At Florida Warm Up, the Hodags went 6-2, with victories that are impressive…I think. They toppled preseason darlings Georgia Tech and 2025 Nationals qualifier Northeastern (twice). Time has those results buoying Wisconsin to 16th in our projected rankings, about 40 points clear of the strength-bid cutoff.
The Hodags followed their season debut with a 7-0 performance at Eastern Qualifiers, sweeping a weaker field but earning a shot at Easterns, where the frisbee blue blood will get a multitude of opportunities at signature wins to return to some of their former glory. After a 5-1 outing at Stanford Invite last weekend, where they only lost on universe to #19 British Columbia in semis, Wisconsin seems primed for success, and most importantly to keep that North Central bid.
Pittsburgh En Sabah Nur
How about another frisbee blue bood, albeit one that has had much more recent success than Wisconsin. #9 Pitt En Sabah Nur were a legitimate national title contender in 2023 and 2024 with Henry Ing, Tristan Yarter, and co., but a mess in 2025, never seriously threatening the new Ohio Valley power #16 Penn State for the sole Nationals bid.
The return of Micah Davis and Julius Clyburn and experienced rookie class headlined by Andrew Mennig and Ezra Beidler-Shenk made Pitt’s talent hard to ignore. But Pitt’s first foray at Florida Warm Up produced a win against #18 Michigan as their only meaningful result, and, paired with a 13-5 loss to #12 Vermont, showcased a high variability between En Sabah’s floor and ceiling. This was reinforced at Smoky Mountain Invite, when they opened pool play with impressive wins over #3 Oregon and #4 North Carolina but also lost by one to both Michigan in prequarters and Georgia Tech in consolation.
Despite some growing pains from an overall young and inexperienced roster that hasn’t really been there before, the ceiling and pedigree of the program certainly has to have an underperforming Penn State — who lost to En Sabah Nur at SMI — more than a little nervous about Pitt returning to their perch atop the Ohio Valley. But if that’s the case, could Ohio Valley be a two-bid region once more?
An admittedly short-handed ↩
