Get ready for Nationals!
May 13, 2026 by Aidan Thomas in Opinion
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The 2026 USA Ultimate D-I College Championships pools and seeding just dropped, and we’ve already got our eye on a ton of marquee games, the pool of death, the most interesting upset spots, and more.
Here’s what we’re looking at in the Women’s Division.
3 Pool Play Matchups To Be Excited For
UBC vs. UNC
You can’t not be excited for this game. The defending national champions vs. the team that won the four previous championships in a pool play matchup that was a barnburner a year ago. UNC lost on universe: UBC went on to win the Championship and UNC didn’t make the bracket!
The reward this year is likely a prequarters bye and expected quarterfinal matchup against Colorado Quandary while the punishment is a prequarters game that could be against a talented and ascending Oregon Fugue squad followed by a potential quarterfinal with Carleton. Massive stakes between two of the division’s biggest brands.
Stanford vs. Pennsylvania
Stanford vs. Washington is the easy pick in this pool, but I’ve got eyes on this intriguing matchup. In a likely windy setting, Stanford will set their infamous zone against the Penn offense headlined by Grace Maroon, the #3 player in Ultiworld’s top 25 women’s D-I player rankings. Penn already won one of the windiest tournaments of the year — East Coast Invite in Frederica, Delaware — and showed an ability to adapt to conditions early in games. This should be an intriguing chess match with key bracket implications coming from the result.
UC Santa Cruz vs. Tufts
I absolutely love this matchup that will pit two of the division’s elite throwers in Rachel Chang of UCSC and Lia Schwartz of Tufts against each other. Who can be the more dynamic weapon for their team in potentially adverse conditions? The winner, assuming they go on to win the pool, avoids a prequarter and would need one win against a non-Carleton/UBC team to make semifinals, making this one a critical pool play matchup.
3 Losers, 2 Winners, 1 Bold Prediction From the Pool Play Draw
Winner: Victoria
With head-to-head wins over SLO and UC San Diego, Victoria jumps two slots from the algorithm rankings and gets a much better path to the bracket because of it. Pool B & Pool C is not a fun place to be for a lower-seeded team trying to find a couple of upsets in pool play. In Pool A, Victoria gets a matchup with UCLA that feels fairly even on paper, and another with Colorado, whom they took to double game point earlier in the season. It’s not a bad draw for the Canadian side, as they look to make the bracket for the first time since 2015, having made Nationals but crashed out in pool play in three straight seasons.
Loser: UNC
The 7-seed is just a brutal spot to be in, especially when it was a toss-up between the sixth and seventh seed positions. The difference is pool play games against defending national champion UBC, who developed a loaded roster without the services of their star Mika Kurahashi for much of the year, and a pool play game against UC Santa Cruz, a much more top-heavy team that doesn’t have the Nationals-winning know-how of the Thunderbirds.
Not to mention, if both teams hold seed, sixth-seeded Tufts could get a quarterfinal date with Stanford or Washington — the favorites in Pool D — while UNC stares down the Carleton machine.
Winner: Pool D teams that make it to the bracket
This is fairly general, but it has a lot to do with potential bracket play matchups. Pool D is going to be a really intriguing rockfight between Stanford, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Vermont, who all have to face the people’s champion in Vermont-B Bruckus. That’s a lot of emotional pressure to deal with knowing probably the whole country is rooting against you.
The teams that do make the bracket, though, will love their potential path. For the pool winner, they’ll likely draw the second-place finisher in Pool C. If it’s UC Santa Cruz or Tufts, they’ll get one of two teams that have not broken through to the semifinal stage in quite some time. If it’s Oregon, that’s a team that is 1-14 against teams seeded in the top eight. The second place finisher out of Pool D will also get one of these matchups, and they have to like their chances to crack the semifinal field without needing to go through Carleton or UBC to do so.
For the second and third place finishers in Pool D, they’ll get a prequarter matchup with Pool A qualifiers, which feels like probably the weakest pool from the second through fifth seeds, featuring a Colorado team that hasn’t really been like elite Quandary teams of the past and feels a clear cut below the division’s top seven, a UCLA team that didn’t make Nationals last year, and Victoria or Georgia teams that would be playing their first bracket games in a long time. Any of Pool D’s top four teams should feel at least decent about their chances with that draw to make quarterfinals.
Loser: Western Washington
It’s been a strong season from Chaos who comfortably qualified for Nationals after falling short in the Northwest game-to-go in 2025. However, they can’t love their draw in Pool B. They sit right behind British Columbia and UNC, a pretty daunting duo, and right ahead of two bracket teams from last season in Cal Poly SLO and Michigan. It’s not going to be an easy road to the bracket for Western Washington.
Loser: UC San Diego
UC San Diego’s slip to the 15-seed cost them a shot at a game versus Western Washington, a matchup that felt very winnable for a UCSD team that pulled two pool play upsets a year ago. Instead, they get Oregon as the three-seed in their pool, and Fugue, who bumbled around the fringe of the top 15 with a disappointing season, is on the rise with a late-season surge that has many thinking Oregon may fulfill their lofty preseason expectations as a potential semifinalist, but they’ll be doing so as one of the most dangerous 10th seeds in recent memory. That leaves UC San Diego needing to find an upset versus either Fugue, Tufts, or UC Santa Cruz, with the latter two teams having combined for just five losses all season.
Bold Prediction: Penn wins Pool D
This is maybe out there on the spectrum of bold takes, but Penn is a team that knows how to play in the wind, and I believe Venus has the best handler in this set of five teams with Grace Maroon. Her counterparts of Abigail Smith, Poppy Wagner, and Sydney Neal make a very capable quartet with the disc, and with any trio of those four behind the disc and the other in the cutting space, UPenn has a lot of capable hands to work the disc through in windy conditions. I like that combination against the Stanford zone, and I think Washington may not quite as built for that type of game, and they thrive with a dangerous deep attack that may be less potent in Rockford.
As mentioned above, Penn already won what was probably the windiest tournament of the year, so they’re experienced in that area, and they can absolutely pull an upset or two and find their way to the top of this pool.
