USA Ultimate: Club Championships Qualification Preview

With the postseason already underway, excitement about the USAU club ultimate championships is reaching a fever pitch. Now that the TCT and the regular season have faded into the rearview, it’s time to tour the country and lay odds on the favorites for Frisco.

What follows is a division-by-division overview of the likely contenders across the board. Some squads highlighted here may not make it to the Big Dance, but that's part of what the postseason series is all about. And if your squad doesn't get mentioned at all, well hey: maybe that's what it's going to take to fire your team up to make it to the show.

Coverage? Read on.

Mixed

Suhaimi Abdullah/Getty Images

As ever, the Mixed division reflects the highest amount of parity. Three regions look strong across the board, and it really seems as though almost anyone could win the title this October.

Drag’N Thrust and Chad Larson Experience appear poised to come out of the gusty North Central region with the wind at their backs. Both performed well this summer, with Drag’N Thrust adding a World Championship to their 2013 Club title. For their part, Chad Larson Experience made it all the way to the final game of the Triple Crown Tour, and the former champs certainly know how to play well when the stakes are high.

Of course, plenty of other regions boast contenders . The Southwest is as burly as ever, with up to six California teams poised to contend. Former champions Blackbird have regrouped from last year’s stunning upset in the game to go, and the team that vanquished them, 7 Figures, came within a hair’s breadth of capturing this year’s regular-season crown.

The one team atop them, Polar Bears, has an impressive pedigree of its own: With a win in the TCT finals and a second-place finish at Worlds atop four straight USAU finals appearances, they’re no slouch. Mischief, Groove, and perhaps even San Diego’s upstart club, Dorado, all have chances to make waves come the October championships as well—depending, that is, on who qualifies.

With six strong teams and only five bids, someone is going to be spending a cold fall in California.

Speaking of bid allocations, the Northeast region is howling. With just two berths but four contenders in Toronto’s Union and Boston-area stalwarts Slow White, Wild Card and The Ghosts, the regional championships across the country look to be equally tough—and whoever from the cold Northeast emerges will be heading into Club Championships loaded and ready for bear.

Moving from the center ring to those with an outside chance at the title, Bucket enters the consideration. The Atlanta squad’s regular-season record came to rest at 20-0, and there’s no doubt that playing game after game without blinking proves a team’s character. However, Bucket has limited experience outside of the Southeast region and remains a bit more of a mystery than an undefeated team should normally be.

AMP, too, is a bit of dice roll, but they are hard to discount. Though the perennial Mid-Atlantic contender’s results are less than awe-inspiring this year, it’s hard to argue with a team that’s made it to quarterfinals or better seven times in the past decade.

Dark-horse candidates will ride in to play spoiler, though, it’s less likely that any of them will present a serious challenge.

The Northwest teams have seen little play outside their regions, and Cosa Nostra, the team likely to emerge from South Central, has been up and down at best. (Of course, we've underestimated them before.) The Great Lakes region will be a slugfest, and while any one of a number of young teams could emerge, their general inexperience will likely make Frisco an uphill battle for whoever comes out of the Ohio/Michigan area.

Open Division

Russell Gaskamp

There are four top teams in open, and then there’s everybody else. Revolver, Sockeye, Johnny Bravo, and Ironside, last year’s top four teams and this year’s four open Worlds attendees from the USA, appear to be the squads with the best—and really, just about the only—chance to take home the crown.

That’s not to say that other teams are soft—far from it. Machine are the best they have ever been, and Chain Lightning and GOAT have shown that they are able to steal wins at any time. That’s not quite the same thing as a national contender, though, in the tight and athletic arms race that is the open division. And while Doublewide are good, they’re not as good as they were in 2012 when they won it all.

Rounding out the field, PoNY, Ring of Fire and Truck Stop are all strong, and though the North Central has to make do with two bids between three dynamic teams, regardless of who between Madison Club, Sub Zero and Prairie Fire punches their tickets south, the region will be fine.

Disgruntlement over bid allocations were not limited to the North Central, however. The Southwest region found itself with such parity below Revolver that Boost FC, Condors and Streetgang all kept one another from earning a second regional bid. In Great Lakes, the No. 2 team, High Five Ultimate, beat four top-16 teams to close out the season...and yet still didn't earn an extra bid.

Whether all this consternation will lead to another change in the Club Championships invite algorithm remains to be seen. Regardless, open division fans will be treated to a solid showing come mid-October.

Women's Division

Russell Gaskamp

Viva's Chip Chang with the swing flick

Women’s looks a lot like Men’s: There are four teams well at the top and a number of solid contenders slightly behind.

Fury, Scandal, Riot and Brute Squad are—in no particular order—the class of the Women’s division. There are other strong teams, to be sure. Nemesis and Molly Brown have proven that they are particularly tough, and Showdown, Nightlock or either of the Canadian teams could be a spoiler.

Still, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which a team outside the top four is able to bring the skill, intensity and endurance necessary to win out through Frisco and take home a championship trophy.

With just a little over a month left until Club Championships, what is your local team doing to prepare? And most importantly, who do you think has the juice?