A vacated bid, a Monday night game-to-go, and more from the Northeast!
September 25, 2026 by Nate Knowles in News
Ultiworld’s coverage of the 2026 club 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.
Most eyes this weekend will be on the teams vying to qualify for the Club National Championships in San Diego next month. But only 48 teams across the three club divisions get that honor, and only another handful of teams are truly in contention. For most teams, the club season culminates when they make it to day two of Regionals, or win a game in pool play, or even just getting to Regionals in the first place.
One of the teams in that final category – New York Swipes – has been thrust into the spotlight this week, even though they will not play at Northeast Regionals.
Due to an unexpected pickup team attending NY Metro Mixed Sectionals, Swipes failed to qualify for Regionals despite upsetting a bid-earning team to make the game-to-go. But when the pickup team declined their invite to Regionals, the resulting drama –. Including two declined bids, a mistakenly sent bid, a fifth-place game under the lights more than a week after Sectionals, and a complete change in host location – has made the Northeast anything but simple this postseason.
Spots at Regionals are earned at various Sectional events, with regional bids allocated based upon size autobids and regular season rankings detailed in the USAU Club Guidelines.
With limited numbers of bids in competitive sections, just getting to Regionals can be an accomplishment. A topic of much debate regarding this qualification has been the acceptance of “pickup” teams – teams that did not reach the 10-game threshold to be included in USAU’s end-of-season rankings. These teams cannot earn the section a bid but may still qualify for Regionals based upon their placement, something that can be frustrating for traditional teams that finish behind them.
The Metro NY section earned three bids in the 2026 postseason, with 11 teams fighting for qualification. The bid-earning teams, per the postseason rankings, were Brooklyn Grand Army, Newburgh Funk, and Brooklyn Heat Wave. But at Sectionals, Friends and Lovers, the sixth-seeded pickup team comprised largely of former BENT and Blueprint players, managed to upset their way into second place, obtaining the second strength bid, with Funk claiming the third bid over NY Swipes in the game-to-go to Regionals. But the story went well beyond what otherwise would have been a typical bidnapping when Friends and Lovers declined their bid to Regionals.
When a team earns and then declines a bid to Regionals, the bid does not just trickle down to the next-highest placing team in the section; instead, the process follows something similar to the way strength bids are distributed. Per the Club Guidelines: “The next highest finishing, non-qualifying team from each section will be compared to one another. The team with the highest final regular season ranking will be awarded the next bid. This process will be repeated until all bids have been awarded.”
This meant that despite Swipes being the highest-ranked team that lost in the game-to-go (112), they would not be offered the bid, as unranked Obscure out of the South New England section took on the rank of the team below them. Obscure did not complete 10 sanctioned games during the regular season, only attending Boston Invite, and as such were excluded from the rankings. The ranking that Obscure was supposed to obtain was also not simple, as the fifth-place South New England game did not occur due to weather and poor field conditions. Both parties that did not participate in the fifth-place game were ranked higher than Swipes (League of Shadows and T Party, 99th and 111th, respectively), meaning the winner technically did not matter, sending the bid to Obscure.
In a fashion appropriate to the events that came before, Obscure also chose to decline the bid, meaning that now the bid would be decided by the highest-ranked finisher that was next in line in each section, which would be the winner of the unplayed fifth-place game in the South New England section. USAU reached out to the teams and offered to allow League of Shadows to take the bid as the higher-ranked team.
Before that, though, Swipes were mistakenly offered a bid – they accepted it before having it rescinded about 24 hours later when USAU realized it was a mistake after hearing from a T-Party player that the rules hadn’t been properly followed. League of Shadows later reached out, and USAU confirmed that the bid should have gone to League of Shadows.
But the decision was final: even though Friends and Lovers wanted to forfeit the NY Metro final, which would have conveyed the bid to Swipes, they were told they had to compete, which meant that Swipes would not be offered a bid because Friends and Lovers declined their bid, setting in motion the vacated bid process, rather than forfeiting.
Despite being offered a bid and having it rescinded, Swipes’ attitude has remained positive – they are advocating for the institution of rules similar to those in college ultimate, where the bid allocation goes through each team that lost in a game-to-go before moving on to lower-placing teams.
“We weren’t realistically expecting USAU to overturn everything and suddenly send Swipes to Regionals,” the team said. “We just felt it was important to fight for our team, challenge what we believed was an ambiguous policy, and push USAU to clarify the process for future seasons. We would much rather see a clear rule for 2027 than have another team go through the same emotional roller coaster next year.”
This wasn’t the end of the drama.
Even though they were offered a Regionals slot thanks to their higher ranking, League of Shadows agreed to play the fifth-place game against T-Party in a Monday Night showcase on September 21st, livestreamed for the world to see. Amidst a celebratory atmosphere in Boston, League of Shadows topped T-Party 15-10, firmly earning their bid to Northeast Regionals.
“We’re really happy we got to play that game, and we’re very thankful for everyone that helped make it happen and made it such an awesome event,” said League of Shadows leadership. “We knew this had the potential to be something really cool for the scene, and, based on how many people watched the game both in person and on the live stream, it feels really good to know that it was. Having a crowd of over a hundred people at 9 p.m. on a Monday night to watch a 5th place make-up game-to-go sounds insane, but it really speaks to how supportive and cool the Boston ultimate scene is that so many people went with it and had a good time.”
“We’re genuinely so happy that all of this resulted in the cinematic live stream of the League of Shadows versus T Party fifth-place game,” said NY Swipes leadership, who also tuned in to enjoy the community event and were quite active in the live chat. “We have no ill will toward LoS, T-Party, Obscure, or Friends and Lovers. If anything, shoutout to LoS for choosing to play that game and give the community that moment. It was a pretty perfect ending to an admittedly bizarre sequence of events.”
Adding to the mixed drama is a logistical wrinkle, as the Northeast Regional tournament was rescheduled from its usual location in Devens, MA, to Batavia, NY, an almost six-hour drive away, due to the weekend’s impending Nor’easter rain storms. After initial reports that the tournament would be postponed until the following weekend, USA Ultimate rescheduled the tournament on the original dates at the far western edge of the region.
Although a number of teams in the Men’s and Women’s Divisions dropped out of the tournament due to the location change, there would be no reprieve for Swipes: all of the qualified Mixed teams decided to make the drive.
Watch Nationals qualifying action from Northeast, Northwest, and Southwest Regionals this Sunday live on Ultiworld!
