Here's our best guess.
May 6, 2026 by Charlie Eisenhood in Analysis
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After the excitement of Regionals, we now have the full field of Nationals teams. It’s time to start thinking about what the seeding and pools might look like for the College Championships.
The post-Regionals rankings will be heavily leaned upon, and the order of finish at Regionals “will be strongly considered in determining seeding for Nationals, but will not be binding.” Please note that we do our best to follow USA Ultimate’s other guidelines for seeding: head-to-head wins matter at the margin and historic success is considered. In D-III, USA Ultimate also avoids rematches in pool play as much as possible.
Let’s kick things off right away with the pools generated by my predicted seeding.
Men’s Division
| Pool A | Pool B | Pool C | Pool D |
|---|---|---|---|
| Middlebury (1) | Carleton CHOP (2) | Lewis & Clark (3) | Oklahoma Christian (4) |
| Claremont (8) | Williams (7) | St. Olaf (6) | Elon (5) |
| Macalester (12) | Whitman (11) | Franciscan (10) | Bowdoin (9) |
| Colorado Mines (13) | Berry (14) | Rochester (15) | Hillsdale (16) |
Notes
- These are straight rankings. I looked around at various head-to-head adjustments but I didn’t come up with anything that seemed logical and didn’t just create a regional rematch. Keeping it simple!
Women’s Division
| Pool A | Pool B | Pool C | Pool D |
|---|---|---|---|
| Davenport (1) | Haverford / Bryn Mawr (2) | Carleton Eclipse (3) | Middlebury (4) |
| St. Olaf (8) | Whitman (7) | Rice (6) | Wesleyan (5) |
| Colorado College (12) | Union (11) | Kenyon (10) | Macalester (9) |
| Santa Clara (13) | Mt. Holyoke (14) | Lewis and Clark (15) | Richmond (16) |
Notes
- By and large, these seedings are tied tightly to the algorithmic rankings. I only made two swaps, noted below.
- Haverford/Bryn Mawr has a head-to-head win over Carleton Eclipse, so I moved HBM up to the #2 seed.
- However, that swap created a regional rematch. So I swapped Macalester and Kenyon, who were within 10 points of one another in the rankings, to keep Carleton and Macalester out of the same pool.
- USAU could certainly just go straight rankings, but it feels like a slight disadvantage to Haverford / Bryn Mawr to do that. Getting the top seeds accurately placed is important. I think this is more fair, and I think this is how USAU will handle the situation.
