Ranking the best players in the D-III Men's division in 2026.

May 7, 2026 by Ultiworld in Opinion

There’s no shortage of talent in the D-III college men’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 six members of our coverage team to weigh in on the following prompt:

If you were starting a college team today with the singular goal of winning a theoretical D-III 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 initiated after regionals began, but finalized before the final regionals weekend. Rankings reflect information available up to that point.

The Scoring System (Methodology)

All staff ranked between 15 and 20 eligible players, and went through multiple rounds of revisions, and make their ballots visible to the public.

This year, we changed to a normalized scoring system. 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 ballot, for example, would receive a grade of 100.

Our tiebreaker procedure is removing the highest and lowest scores for each player and recalculating. The next step is head-to-head on a per-ballot basis, followed by total number of ballots, then highest rank. Final decision is editorial.

We’ll start with our top 5, and discussion about that group. Then we’ll reveal the entire top 15, followed by the complete ballots, and additional conversations about the rankings.

The Top 5

Player	Pts.	Alex Rubin	Calvin Ciorba	Graham Gordon	Hunter Lang	Josh Katz	TJ Lee
Louis Douville Beaudoin (Middlebury)	100.00	1	1	1	1	1	1
Peter Mans (Middlebury)	93.33	2	2	3	2	2	3
Kyle Suelflow (Macalester)	82.50	5	4	2	6	3	7
Brayden Morrison (Elon)	79.17	4	3	7	3	4	10
Jude Schmiesing (Franciscan)	72.50	8	5	4	5	8	9

Note: Jude Schmiesing placed ahead of Owen Suelflow (Macalester) via tiebreak.

Louis Douville Beaudoin (Middlebury) was unanimously #1 and Peter Mans (Middlebury) was the only other player in everyone’s top three. After that, though, the field opened up. Make the case for who should be the next one up.

Josh Katz (Staff Writer): Kyle Suelflow (Macalester) and Brayden Morrison (Elon) were the top contenders for that third spot. Suelflow gets the edge for his consistency. Morrison is incredibly hot and cold; a lights-out thrower, the best in the division when he’s on but prone to taking too many risks and struggling to get out of a rut he’s in. Suelflow’s athleticism and energy let him impact every game in multiple ways. His play with Drag’n Thrust in club ultimate has been impressive, and if Macalester makes Nationals, he’s going to look positively dominant in the deep space.

Alex Rubin (Senior Staff Writer): I’m an outlier with Isamu Sims (Claremont), who won a tiebreak with Morrison by winning the matchup at Easterns. Both have impressive, well-rounded skill sets and have proven they can carry a team at a high level. While Suelflow is very good, we haven’t seen him at the College Championships yet.

TJ Lee (Contributor, Player for Oklahoma Christian): Couper Kerns (Oklahoma Christian) is that kind of guy. He wins in isolation cutting, continue cutting, and small-ball handling, and he’s the one who gets the disc back on a turn. Orlando Impas (Lewis & Clark) is at my #4, but could easily bump up. He seems impossible to guard at times, has crafty throws, and doesn’t let his height hold him back.

Calvin Ciorba (Staff Writer): Following the prompt of who to build a team around, Morrison is the guy. He wants the ball and commands the field with the skill to slice and dice through every defense. On a high-level club team, the Suelflows fit into roles well, but they don’t command the disc like Morrison does.

This is our first official D-III rankings. What was your process? What were you looking for? Are there unique wrinkles to the division that altered the way you rated players?

Includes responses from both the D-III Men’s and Women’s division voters.

Josh: With less film available for D-III, there’s more reasoning, trusting of others’ opinions, and guesswork when making my list. Someone like Jonas Geere (St. Olaf), I’ve seen exactly once since 2024 Nationals. But he was great at that tournament, St. Olaf is having a great season, and others have said he’s one of their best players. So he makes my ballot. Similar thoughts put Theo Barton and Zach Widmyer on my ballot, though we do have one game of film for them this season.

Keith Raynor (Senior Editor): I’ve come to accept that we are going to have to stretch to make this work. We have less film (most of which is infected by intense wind that warps the game), fewer reps, and decreased access to utilize. I’ve been doing this exercise for years and always used how players perform in club and National Team settings to help inform evaluations, so I’m certainly leaning on D-III Nationals last season to help make judgments. So is D-III a little more vibey than D-I? Yes. And that’s why we haven’t done it in years past. But maybe we shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good, as Charlie Eisenhood likes to say.

Calvin: I have the slight advantage of having played against all these players in college and club, and used my experience with that as well as tape and listening to the D-III chatter. I have a slight bias against people I haven’t actually played (sorry Randy Lahm and Nico Martinez). Combining this with the prompt of who I would want to build my D-III team around—not just individual skill—helped me devise my rankings.

The Top 15 and Beyond