From finals to bid-battles, recapping the biggest storylines from the last day of Pro Champs!
September 7, 2026 by Alex Rubin, Aidan Thomas and Zack Davis in Recap
Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2026 club ultimate season is presented by Spin Ultimate; all opinions are those of the author(s). Find out how Spin can get you, and your team, looking your best this season.
The last day of the last tournament of the club regular season had some of everything, as title favorites DC Scandal flashed their dominance with a decisive blowout final while DC Truck Stop prevailed in a universe point comeback and Austin Disco Club pulled off arguably the upset of the season. Even consolation was a fraught battle, with every point a potential decisive move in the bid picture,
Women’s Recap | Mixed Recap | Men’s Recap
Women’s Division
Best Ever?
#1 Washington D.C. Scandal came into the weekend with two of the four boxes needed for the single season grand-slam checked, and will take the train back home with three. Their second stop on the Triple Crown Tour wasn’t quite as difficult as their first stop, but the results are the same: the biggest trophy. Looking at the results you wouldn’t be able to tell, but Scandal got out to a bit of a slow start in pool play, playing their closest game of the weekend in their third match on Saturday, a 15-11 finish over #6 Seattle Riot. They breezed through quarters, doubled up #8 BENT in the semifinal, then met Riot for a rematch in the final, which got out of hand quickly and ended 15-3.
There can only be so much praise heaped on Scandal. There’s already a case to be made that this is the best team to ever be assembled in the women’s division, and the postseason hasn’t even begun. Scandal are 17-0 in USAU play and 9-0 in international play this year.
Their offense is exacting. The flashy plays are few and far between, not because the talent isn’t there, but rather because it’s unnecessary. For lack of a better term, it’s boring, but in the same way that watching a river flow is boring. There’s a deep natural power to it, but the results are inevitable.
This weekend wasn’t about Claire Trop and Kami Groom for Scandal, rather it was about Kira Flores and Anna Cauchy. Flores was incredibly comfortable in the handler slot, dealing out assist after assist, and when she wasn’t, she was flying down field and hauling in goals. Cauchy was just permanently open it seemed, reeling in deep shots from the aforementioned Flores, or from Sami Smalling, Tyler Smith, Kat McGuire, and Malisa Dang. Smith was instrumental to Scandal’s success this weekend, even if not lighting up the stat sheet quite like they did in Limerick. That’s not even mentioning Marie Perivier, who had a scintillating snag in the final to set the tone early.
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Defensively, Scandal were unequaled, forcing turns in spades with sound fundamentals, denying unders and daring opposing teams to try them deep. Ashleigh Jentilet and Jordan Sorenson were like orcas in the water picking, off any disc unfortunate enough to be floating in their general area.
But the marking was what really made the difference. Since they were so bought in on taking away the under, any breakside shenanigans could sink their whole system. Thus, when they got the offense trapped on the sideline, they were all in on contain. From there the opposition had two options: put up a contested huck, or slowly get strangled out as the throwing lane got smaller and smaller. There were blocks aplenty, but ultimately Scandal just forced errors and then capitalized.
If Scandal stay at this level, or even somehow improve in October, it’s hard to think that they are not just favorites to win, but favorites against the field. They already have two wins over both #4 Boston Brute Squad and #2 San Francisco Fury, a win over #3 Denver Molly Brown, and two wins over Riot. The only team in the top 10 they don’t have a direct head-to-head win over is #5 San Francisco Nightlock, and while they are certainly flying this season, it would be an upset for the ages for them to take a game off of Scandal.
Nothing is over until it’s over, and Scandal have definitely been challenged this season, but no one has quite cracked the code yet.
Parcha Earn Their Bid
#13 Pittsburgh Parcha looked revitalized all weekend, and took care of business in consolation to earn a third bid for the Mid-Atlantic. With the way they performed though, they might not need it. They blew the doors off Washington D.C. Agency yesterday and won in the fifth-place match against Phoenix Monday afternoon, 15-8. They were led by the efforts of Miya Liang and Linn Bjanes, both of whom leveraged their speed, agility, and air time to make their handlers’ jobs easy.
With a third bid, Parcha’s ticket to Nationals is contingent on fending off the aforementioned Agency, and the other Washington D.C. club, Grit. Parcha beat both this weekend. The other bid earners for the region are Nationals favorites Scandal and #9 Philadelphia Flight. Flight beat Parcha way back at PEC East 15-12, but again, Parcha looked like an entirely different team this weekend, hanging with Riot, BENT, and Molly Brown, even though they were unable to secure a win. Seeding isn’t immaterial for Nationals, and Flight might want to check their rearview rather than aim for an upset over Scandal.
Around the Complex
Molly Brown won the third place game 15-13 over BENT. Molly Brown still have the best results against Scandal at a USAU event this season, a 15-14 semifinal game at the U.S. Open, and while they may have the lowest floor of any of the elite teams, they might still have the highest ceiling. Their play-style philosophy lends itself to volatility, which they have leveraged for a Nationals semifinal appearance every year for the last decade. Don’t count out the unsinkables.
Phoenix showed signs of improvement, but lacked consistency, only beating two non bid-earners on the weekend in DC Grit and Agency. It may be an early exit in October for the birds (if they don’t get upset at regionals), but they will come back next year that much stronger. The rebuild is on the right track.
All-Stream Team
- Lauren Goddu (Seattle Riot)
- Kira Flores (Washington DC Scandal)
- Anna Cauchy (Washington DC Scandal)
- Miya Liang (Pittsburgh Parcha)
- Manu Cárdenas (Denver Molly Brown)
- Samiya Ismail (Seattle Riot)
- Jessica McDonnell (New York BENT)
Mixed Division
ADC Stun Hybrid
#10 Austin Disco Club put together the upset of the year, knocking off #1 Ann Arbor Hybrid 15-12 in the Pro Champs final. Powered by an unflappable backfield and a teamwide sense of swagger, Disco Club broke twice to start the game and never looked back as Hybrid struggled to find their foothold in the game.
As teams start to plot their postseason paths, Disco Club just gave the division a blueprint to unseating the two-time defending champions. Their offense moved the disc quickly and never let the high-pressure Hybrid defense get set. Myles Armstrong, Carly Atwell, Sean Brady, and Jaime Estes were the most high-touch parts of the Austin offense, and they carefully balanced precision, pace, and ambition as they attacked the Hybrid defense.
Disco Club notably cycled through two main lines, playing them on both offense and defense. While many teams might settle on an O-line rotation topping out at 7-10 players, Disco Club played closer to 15. This strategy made it more difficult for Hybrid to set matchups against changing personnel and also contributed to a teamwide sense of offensive competence, which made converting break chances a routine success.
Hybrid are still among the favorites to win Nationals, though this setback likely cost them the top seed at October’s season finale. It is always a challenge to stay at a collective peak over the course of several months. Hybrid reached one in August when they won the World Ultimate Club Championship, and hope to find another in October at Nationals since they couldn’t just ride their success all the way through.
For Disco Club, their job will be replicating this success in six weeks’ time. Whether this win becomes a flukey note on a long season or the start of a new wave of contention is up to the group from Austin, who just scored their most significant win as a program.
The Final Strength Bid
After dropping out of bid earning range following Sunday’s bracket play results, #11 Boston Sprocket beat #3 Boston Slow 15-14 in the fifth place game on Monday to restore hope that they might hold on to that bid. It will be an agonizing wait for the final rankings to come from USA Ultimate. The various projections floating around the internet suggest that the point totals between Sprocket, the Southwest Region’s #13 Bay Area Mischief, and the Northwest Region’s #17 Salt Lake Sego will be close enough that approximate algorithms are not sufficient.
Around the Complex
#12 Minneapolis Drag’n Thrust finished the tournament in third place, taking down #4 Fort Collins shame. in the third place game. While different teams take different approaches to consolation, this win caps a strong weekend for a Drag’n Thrust squad that came into the tournament outside the strength bid picture. While they do not have any concerns as the favorite to take the autobid out of the North Central region, building momentum and confidence ahead of the postseason could propel Drag’n Thrust to yet another semifinal at the end of October. Liz Hart has proven to be a key force on the O-line, providing a needed pressure-release valve downfield.
Though #18 Durham Toro finish the weekend in seventh place (beating winless Lawless, who will end their regular season without a single victory), they will also head into the Series with confidence. Close losses to Slow, Hybrid, and shame. prove that Toro will be competitive at the Nationals level. At their best, Toro can dominate downfield as the combination of Claire Bidigaire-Curtis and Grayson Sanner are too difficult for anyone to reasonably stop. When Toro can combine their offensive execution with strong defensive pressure, they’re a true force to be reckoned with.
It was a strange tournament for Slow. They lost twice to Sprocket and once to Drag’n Thrust, but were also the only team this weekend to beat Disco Club. They did not get the chance to play either Hybrid or shame., the other two teams considered among the contenders before the tournament began. While they will likely drop in our power rankings, the clear evidence from the weekend indicates that Slow beat the tournament champions. Slow may have been playing vanilla strategies and more open lines against regional rival Sprocket, but their next task is proving their higher ranking in a few weeks at regionals when they’ll likely face Sprocket again – this time perhaps with a berth to Nationals on the line.
All-Stream Team
- Myles Armstrong (Austin Disco Club)
- Sam Goldstein (Fort Collins shame.)
- Tannor Johnson-Go (Boston Sprocket)
- Dalton Smith (Ann Arbor Hybrid)
- Rachel Mast (Ann Arbor Hybrid)
- Danielle Byers (Minneapolis Drag’n Thrust)
- Claire Bidigare-Curtis (Durham Toro)
- Jaime Estes (Austin Disco Club)
Men’s Division
It wasn’t exactly the stacked field of national title favorites that Washington D.C. Truck Stop are accustomed to battling at the TCT Pro Championships. However, in a year where Truck Stop sit definitively outside the top echelon of contenders and had put forward two inconsistent tournament efforts, a tournament win was exactly the shot in the arm they needed heading into the postseason.
Truck Stop accomplished the feat, marching to a 6-0 record, their efforts highlighted by wins over regional rival #10 Philadelphia Pacmen in Saturday pool play, and the only other Pro Flight team in the field, #9 Raleigh Ring of Fire, in the final. Truck Stop had placed last in significantly stronger Pro Champs fields in 2024 and 2025 – dismal efforts that came on the heels of three straight final appearances from 2021-2023 with titles in ‘22 and ‘23.
AJ Merriman had four assists and Elliot Bonnet had four goals in the final for Truck, who won with a dirty hold on universe point, 15-14. They won every other game by at least three points, with bracket play victories over #17 Montreal Mephisto and #11 Atlanta Chain Lightning.
In the final, their offense was precise. They turned the disc just five total times, and got it back three of those times, holding Ring to a single break in each half. Their D-line turned it up late and converted three of four break opportunities to seal the victory.
Ring of Fire were without new star Tobias Brooks, but they got simply outstanding play from Matt Gouchoe-Hanas in the final, as he quarterbacked the Raleigh offense to the tune of three assists, six goals and a block. Although the center handler for most of the day, Gouchoe-Hanas ejected deep for a few goals and consistently got free in small spaces to lead the Raleigh offense.
Ring got to the final with a pool play win over Chain Lightning, and bracket play wins over #16 Austin Doublewide and #10 Philadelphia Pacmen.
Doublewide Win Most Important 5th-Place Final
Ahead of the men’s division’s thrilling finale between Truck Stop and Ring of Fire, additional placement bracket games took the division’s center stage, with a lot of attention on an extremely consequential fifth-place battle between #16 Doublewide and #17 Mephisto. Straddling the bid cutoff line in the projected rankings, where the top 16 teams earn a bid, it was likely that the winner of this game could claim the last spot, pending some additional secondary algorithm effects for other teams on the bubble.
Doublewide did well to give themselves an opportunity, as they followed up a dismal Saturday with an extremely positive effort on Sunday. A 15-14 loss to Ring of Fire in quarterfinals netted Doublewide positive rating points, and a 15-6 thumping of #23 Virginia Vault was, per the projected rankings, the most impactful win on their resume, exceeding their early-season upset of #6 Boston DiG.
Similarly, Mephisto, who entered the weekend 15th in the projected rankings, worked themselves right back to the edge of the bubble with a thrashing of Florida Untied. Mephisto’s two wins this season over Untied represent their best rating results of the season, and their quarterfinal loss on Sunday to Truck Stop was close enough (15-12) to avoid slipping in the rankings.
All that to say, the two teams entered with razor thin margins for error and everything to play for, and the game, consequentially, was a thriller. It came down to double game point, and it’s a spot where Doublewide have had more success this year, despite their Sunday loss to Ring of Fire. They entered the game 3-2 in universe point situations, with their only losses to Ring and Chain Lightning.
Mephisto, meanwhile, entered 0-2 in universe point situations. Maybe even more telling of their comfort level in the clutch, they were 1-4 in games decided by four or less points, and 2-7 in games decided by five or less points.
Make it 0-3, 1-5 and 2-8, as Doublewide edged out Mephisto 15-14, earning fifth place in the tournament, and, far more importantly, almost assuredly earning a second strength bid for South Central. The third-best team in the South Central is ranked 41st, so Doublewide’s Nationals berth is nearly assured, so long as they avoid a shocker at regionals.
Not all is lost for Mephisto, who, pending final rating adjustments, should see their bid usurped by regional rival #24 Portland Red Tide. This will create an absolutely thrilling Northeast Regionals, where nine teams sit between 15th and 37th in the rankings, competing for the third and final bid in the region.
Bring on the madness.
Around the Complex
In a less consequential third-place game, although one that could have seeding implications at Nationals, Chain Lightning exacted some revenge from their Elite-Select Challenge championship loss to #10 Philadelphia Pacmen, pushing past the Philly squad, 15-13.
And finally, in a game with zero consequences other than pride, Florida Untied knocked off #23 Virginia Vault 15-11 to break seed and finish seventh. Untied finished 2-4 on the weekend, and Vault finished 1-5. Both teams had impressive moments this tournament, with each collecting their first top 25 wins of the season.
All-Stream Team
- Matt Gouchoe-Hanas (Raleigh Ring of Fire)
- Eli Fried (Raleigh Ring of Fire)
- AJ Merriman (Washington D.C. Truck Stop)
- Elliot Bonnet (Washington D.C. Truck Stop)
- Matthew Armour (Austin Doublewide)
- Maxwell Tran (Philadelphia Pacmen)
- Will Selfridge (Atlanta Chain Lightning)
