What can we takeaway from three divisions with plenty of chaos?
July 29, 2026 by Aidan Thomas in Opinion, Recap
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The Select Flight Invite tournaments took place this past weekend. And with the ultimate world taking a breath after the WJUC and ahead of the U.S. Open, they more or less flew under the radar. No national title contenders were in action, but plenty of potential bid-earners and bid-stealers were lacing up their cleats. Sylvania, Ohio, played host to SFI East, so let’s look at the results and storylines that mattered from this tournament.
1. GOAT Establishes Clear Gap, While Blueprint Gets Second Yet Again
In the Men’s Division, there was a pretty clear hierarchy at the top, as #12 Toronto GOAT outclassed everyone, with their closest win being a 15-10 victory in the final over New York Blueprint. While no other ranked teams were in the field, GOAT also throttled fringe Top 25 squads Florida Untied (15-7) and Pittsburgh Temper (15-5), beating the latter for the second time this season.
For Blueprint’s part, they were similarly dominant. They had one pool play game as close as 15-12, but otherwise won 15-7, 15-8, 15-9 and 15-11 en route to the final. With the loss to GOAT, Blueprint has become the model of consistency. They are 16-0 in all games that are not tournament finals this year, and 0-3 in those finals.
2. Everyone’s Good, Everyone’s Bad, Nothing Makes Sense
Good luck to those assembling power rankings (myself included) this week because, once again, it feels like the back end of the Top 25 is a wild toss up. After those aforementioned top two teams, it was all a mess.
Pittsburgh Temper finished third despite opening the tournament with a loss to No.13 seed ELDL. Oddly enough, that upset was ELDL’s only win before reaching the 13th-place bracket. Columbus Flying Dutchmen upset Untied en route to winning Pool B on Saturday, but they were promptly stymied by Hartford Colt in the quarterfinals. Untied got their revenge over the Dutchmen in the fifth-place game. Minneapolis Mallard started 2-0, pushed Temper to universe, and then faded to a seventh-place finish. They played Lounar who pushed Untied to double game point, but were also forced into a 15-14 nailbiter against No.14 seed Nightlock.
Got all of that? Anybody can seemingly beat anybody in the absolute jumble that is just outside the Top 25.
3. Toronto Union Takes Step Towards a Bid
Over in Mixed, there was another clear top dog in the field: #20 Toronto Union put on a show, winning all three bracket games by at least eight points. A seemingly sleepy 15-11 opening pool play win was Union’s only game played to a closer margin. Union didn’t face either of the other ranked teams in the field as both #21 Nashville ‘Shine and #23 Pittsburgh Port Authority stumbled before a potential clash with the top seed.
Union opened their season with pool play losses to #3 Boston Slow and #9 Boston Sprocket at PEC East and have rebounded with 10 straight wins. That should push Union into bid-earning territory, a necessity in a Great Lakes region anchored by two-time defending champion Ann Arbor Hybrid.
4. Back End Jumble
It’s easy to say that Union’s road was easy, but perhaps it’s more fair to look at the rest of what happened, as we’ll likely see some significant shuffling in the back end of the mixed power rankings. #21 ‘Shine didn’t even make the championship bracket, faltering twice in pool play. Then they dropped another result in ninals and fell to a disappointing 11th place finish with a 3-3 record. They’ll almost certainly lose their spot in the rankings. #23 Port Authority was better on Saturday, winning their pool, but they failed to deliver twice against regional rivals on Sunday, first against Baltimore Anthem in the quarterfinals and then against Charlottesville Spice in the fifth-place game.
The missteps by ‘Shine and Port Authority will open some debate on who takes their spot in the back end of the rankings. Tournament runner-up Burlington Big Rig certainly made their case, upsetting ‘Shine in pool play and taking down Anthem in semifinals before running into the Union machine. Boston Wild Card matched Big Rig with a 5-1 record, also only losing to Union (in semifinals), taking down Anthem twice and Spice in the quarterfinals. Those two will figure to be the top contenders from this field.
Spice’s rise from the No.14 seed to 5th-place finish with their 4-2 record could be a player, and the upset over Port Authority gives them a big win to hold their heads high about. Anthem made the bracket on the strength of point differential tiebreakers, but they performed admirably once there, upsetting Port Authority and pushing Big Rig to a 15-13 loss. A win there, and the Baltimore squad may have slid back into the rankings. As it is, that loss and the ensuing third-place loss to Wild Card likely keeps them on the outside looking in right now.
5. 6ixers, Then the Rest
Rounding out the SFI East, the Women’s Division, like the men’s and mixed fields, also had a very clear and undisputed winner. #8 Toronto 6ixers didn’t allow more than nine points in their six-game run, dominating #16 Madison Heist, #11 Quebec Iris, and #15 Dallas Dimes in their bracket romp on Sunday. 6ixers were definitely a favorite as they made their season debut, and they did their part in establishing such a gap between themselves and the teams outside the top 10, but now we’ll see where the ceiling lies for 6ixers, as they take on the vaunted San Francisco Fury in their pool play opener this weekend at the U.S. Open. That’s a different kind of test.
6. The #11-#22 Stock Report
Along with Iris, Heist, and Dimes, #17 Chicago Nemesis, #21 Northampton Starling and #22 Austin Vengeance contributed to a field of seven ranked teams in the Women’s Division, by far the most of any field across the six Select Flight Invite divisions this week. So how did it all shake out?
Saturday’s early results in this Swiss Draw format was fairly predictable, with higher-ranked opponents holding serve. Starling went 3-0 with no ranked wins, and Iris and Dimes matched that record, each beating Nemesis en route to booking their place in the championship bracket.
Vengeance lost to 6ixers in pool play but rebounded to qualify for the championship bracket, but Nemesis wasn’t so lucky as their 1-2 record on Saturday with losses to No.2 seed Iris and No.5 seed Nemesis proved to be a brutally difficult draw that dropped the Chicago side to the ninth place bracket (which they dominated). Madison Heist had the most shocking result as, although they qualified for the championship bracket, they dropped a game to the No.20 Ottawa Stella in the third round of the Swiss Draw format (more on that later). But ultimately, six of the seven ranked teams made the championship bracket.
On Sunday, Dimes added a pair of quality wins to their resume, toppling Vengeance and Starling, while Iris handled Starling in the third-place game. Iris and Dimes didn’t play (more on my annoyance about this later), so they’ll likely end up very close to each other in the rankings, but they established themselves as the clear second and third-best teams in the field. Starling, Heist, Vengeance, and Nemesis all have valid claims to be considered the fourth-best teams in the field.
Finally, a new team inserted themselves into this back end of the rankings discussion and that is Stella. The Ottawa squad backed up their upset of Heist by taking down Vengeance in the fifth-place semifinal en route to a sixth-place finish. They’ll absolutely be a contender to sneak into the back end of the rankings
7. Stop Overthinking Formats
The Women’s Division has tried their hand at anything but a normal tournament format, and, honestly, I’m not sure I get it. This one created some weird abnormalities. There was enough field space to do things normally as far as I can tell, given that they played ten games at the same time in each round on Saturday. Do we have an issue with the traditional four-team pools? You could edit the bracket format to create a 10-team top bracket so it’s a clean top two from each pool, and the bottom two from each pool headed to consolation? Or if you want a more traditional format, you can do an Easterns-style format with four pools of five teams each, and only eight teams advancing to the knockouts.
Instead we went with this mashed hybrid of clipped pools and Swiss-style crossovers. The seeding was weird, some teams got absolutely shafted, and the ultimate bracket didn’t make a ton of sense.
Pool play did not adhere to snake seeding, leaving sixth-seeded Vengeance and seventh-seeded Nemesis with brutal pool play draws against 6ixers and Iris, respectively. Meanwhile, Heist, Starling, and Dimes benefitted from pools with no ranked opponents. Nemesis went 1-1 with a close loss to Iris and was rewarded with a win-or-go-home game against Dimes? Meanwhile 1-1 Vengeance gets to face winless No.17 Wicked to qualify for the championship bracket? I don’t get it.
And while it didn’t affect the final result, I was very annoyed that Iris, the second highest ranked team in the field, went 3-0 on Saturday and got drawn into a semifinal with 6ixers. That should have been a final, or at the very least, we deserved an Iris-Dimes semifinal. But Iris lost the second seed on point differential – even though the format gave lower-seeded teams easier pool matchups and, by extension, a better chance to build point differential. What are we doing here? Just play a normal tournament.
