Ranking the best players in the D-I Women's division in 2026.

May 5, 2026 by Ultiworld in Opinion

There’s no shortage of talent in the D-I college women’s 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 a diverse group of five members of our coverage team, as well as an anonymous group of elite players and coaches, and our subscribers, to weigh in on the following prompt:

If you were starting a college team today with the singular goal of winning a theoretical D-I Championship this May, 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. 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 Regionals and/or Nationals.

This year’s balloting process began prior to D-I Regionals beginning and finalized before the final regionals weekend. Rankings reflect information available up to that point.

The Scoring System (Methodology)

There are three voting groups whose ballots are incorporated: Ultiworld Staff, Participants (Players and coaches from nationally competitive teams), and Ultiworld Subscribers. Staff ballots account for 60% of the final composite score, while Participant ballots take up 30%, and Subscribers make up 10%.¹

All staff ranked between 25 and 35 eligible players, and went through multiple rounds of revisions, and make their ballots visible to the public. Subscribers and Participants were asked to rank a minimum of 15 and maximum of 35. These ballots are anonymous to readers.

This year, we changed to a normalized scoring system to account for the variance in ballot volume by group. We converted raw point totals into a Grade (0-100). This represents the percentage of total possible points a player could have received from that specific voting group. A player who was the unanimous #1 choice of every Subscriber, for example, would receive a Subscriber Grade of 100. This keeps us from getting 500 subscriber ballots that overwhelm the other opinions in the mix.

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

The Top 10

Player	Composite Pts.	Alex Rubin	Edward Stephens	Graham Gordon	Keith Raynor	Kiana Hu	Part. Composite (23)	Sub. Composite (31)
Chagall Gelfand (Carleton)	86.78	1	1	1	1	1	1	1
Mika Kurahashi (UBC)	81.87	3	4	2	2	2	4	2
Rachel Chang (UC Santa Cruz)	76.64	2	2	3	5	3	9	4
Grace Maroon (Penn)	75.86	6	3	5	4	5	3	7
Chloe Hakimi (Carleton)	74.97	4	8	9	3	6	5	3
Lia Schwartz (Tufts)	71.96	5	13	10	8	4	2	6
Lauren Goddu (Washington)	68.58	11	10	4	6	11	6	5
Sage McGinley-Smith (Stanford)	60.66	7	6	7	9	9	17	11
Quincy Booth (Georgia)	59.47	10	7	12	19	13	7	12
Naomi Fina (Carleton)	57.30	12	12	17	7	10	11	9

There’s pretty clear consensus that Chagall Gelfand (Carleton) and Mika Kurahashi (UBC) are at the top, but it gets murkier after that, with Rachel Chang (UC Santa Cruz), Grace Maroon (Penn), and Chloe Hakimi (Carleton) making up the rest of the top five. How are you ordering these three, and why?

Kiana Hu (Staff Writer): Rachel Chang is an unreal thrower and a huge reason for Sol’s success this year. They are clinical, threatens every part of the field in a way that makes defense nearly impossible, and is a capable defensive threat on a turn. Chang is the clear third because of Sol’s regular-season performance.

Edward Stephens (Senior Staff Writer): Because of Kurahashi’s injury-limited playing time, I had Chang second. Their impact is in the neighborhood of Gelfand’s. Gelfand, Chang, and a healthy Kurahashi compose a clear top tier; none of the others can crack that trinity.

Keith (Senior Editor): I could have these three in any order on any given day, but I went Hakimi, Maroon, Chang. Hakimi’s versatility and positional soundness continue to impress. Maroon is the most explosive athlete of the three, but multiple years of operating as an offensive centerpiece has honed her throwing skills. Chang has the least dominant role of the three, though they are finally getting a starring role in the most critically acclaimed Santa Cruz season yet.

If Mika Kurahashi was healthy, would you have her or Chagall Gelfand at #1?

Edward: This is the greatest question of all. Could a team win with Kurahashi as the center handler? If the answer is yes, Kurahashi wins. If the answer is no, it’s Gelfand. I’m not sure how I would answer that question myself.

Keith: This is hard. The best I’ve seen Kurahashi play presents a higher ceiling right now than Gelfand. There’s a Kaela Helton-ish sort of undeniability to Kurahashi. But we’ve watched Gelfand dominate for months. She reminds me of Angela Zhu: an absolute rock in the backfield who can play well from range and is a very stout defender. Edward’s point about role is notable enough to break what otherwise feels like a tie.

Alex Rubin (Senior Staff Writer): It’s Gelfand for now, but ask me again another time and I might find different reasoning for a different answer.

Each of us had at least one player that didn’t make the Top 10 that defied the consensus. Which elite player are the rest of us missing on?

Edward: Sabrina Belkin (UCLA) proved to have one of the greatest capacities for takeover play in the division against the gauntlet of teams at the Southwest Triple Crown. Quincy Booth (Georgia) is more of a known quantity and has refined her game to a supreme degree this season. Is she the least guardable player in college ultimate?

Kiana: It was immediately clear at the Santa Barbara Invite how heavily UCLA looks to Belkin as their primary QB. Most impressive is her ability to play back-to-back points going every other and still put up dots that ask very little of her receivers. She is a player you don’t have to see much of to realize her impact.

Keith: I was blown away by Ella Bolan (UBC) at Nationals last year. She can quarterback an offense, has a sharp eye on the field, and plays with skill and pace. This is the player I’m most on an island on, as she is only on one other ballot. Bolan’s role as one of the Birds’ “rulebreakers” is a testament to her ability to control a game.

Alex: What else does Quincy Booth (Georgia) need to do? She carries her team every year and often leads the division in assists at Nationals. She has proven herself a competitor at the elite club level, too. Few players can carry a program with the amount of responsibility she’s taken on while looking so poised and in control. Lili Hobday (Notre Dame) is also better than people realize. She is incredibly well-rounded and has had success at the highest level of club.

The Top 25 and Beyond

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1. Our experience has shown that participant ballots often trend toward regional concentrations and emphasize the strength of teammates, while subscriber ballots provide a broad “wisdom of the crowd” but can be influenced by name recognition. ↩