Southeast Regionals Preview!
Three divisions, six bids, beautiful Bermuda Run, North Carolina
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Regionals weekend is incredibly special in ultimate. Both in the club and college scenes, there is nothing like it. For starters, if you haven’t looked through the various materials that dictate the formats that should be used at regional tournaments based on the number of teams playing and bids available, you’re really missing out on a fun niche.
However, in all seriousness, it’s a weekend unique to the sport of ultimate. All sports playoffs are exciting, have high stakes, and mean a lot to every team. But this is different. This is all at once, everything on the line, for hundreds of teams across the country. There are no days off to regroup. You get 20 minutes, maybe an hour, maybe a night of sleep to get right if things start going sideways. Once you start playing, you have to ride it out until the weekend ends.
Sure, for some teams, this is simply a coronation or a step on their larger journey that will culminate in October in San Diego. For others, it is a celebration of friendship and a summer well spent. But for many, this is what the past several months have been building for, whether it’s the chance to ruin another team’s season, establish themselves higher in the pecking order of a crowded region, or maybe just maybe steal a bid to nationals.
Regionals weekend is special because it is the perfect intersection of community and and competition. Exactly what this sport should be all about.
This weekend, at hallowed Truist Soccer Park in Bermuda Run, NC, the Southeast Men’s, Women’s, and Mixed Regionals will all be played. Here’s what you need to know:
Southeast Women’s:
This is one of those regionals that will be incredibly boring. Unless it isn’t, and if it isn’t, it’ll be the biggest news of the weekend. Phoenix (Raleigh) is the overwhelming favorite to take the one bid to nationals out of the nine-team regional. This season, the Triangle-based team's goals are to return to the semifinals at nationals for the first time since 2021 and possibly beyond after coming incredibly close to upsetting San Francisco Fury in an absolute classic. Since then, they’ve been eliminated in the quarterfinals two years in a row.
Phoenix finished the regular season ranked sixth in the USAU Club rankings. Ozone (Atlanta) is the next highest-ranked team in the Southeast region, at 29th. That 23-spot difference between the first and second-best teams in a region is the widest across the women’s division. Based on that, you could argue that the Southeast Women’s Division is the most top-heavy division in women’s ultimate. To that point, Phoenix did not play a single game against an in-region opponent across three sanctioned regular-season tournaments.
But all may not be lost, drama fans, as there are some scheduling quirks that do not necessarily end up in their favor despite them being the top seed. The tournament format appears to be two pools on Saturday, one with five teams and one with four. So Phoenix will actually play four games on Saturday, against Tabby Rosa (Gainsville), a program that has made nationals within the last few years, CHAOS (Charleston), Magma (Marietta), and Fiasco (Miami). At the same time, the other side of the bracket will play just three games on day one, in a pool with Ozone, Shiver (Durham), Juice Box (Charlotte and Ashville), and Calypso (Tampa). So maybe those extra miles will make a difference on Sunday.
Phoenix will probably win this regional 19 times out of 20. If it won’t be them, it’ll likely be an Ozone upset. However, there is a logjam under Ozone who could potentially steal a spot in the final: Juice Box (finished #34 nationally) and Tabby Rosa (#38) would be the next picks, although Shiver (#44) did upset Juice Box at sectionals so maybe they’re peaking at the right time.
Southeast Men’s:
The Southeast Men’s Regional will be more intriguing on paper than the women’s one because there will be more moving parts. A larger sample size means there’s a higher probability of something unexpected or dramatic happening, which is really what regionals weekend is all about. Sixteen teams! Three bids to nationals! Clipped pools and a confusing amount of placement brackets on the tournament format page! Should be a great weekend of fun. Now on the upset front…that may not end the way casual or neutral observers want.
Ring of Fire (Raleigh) finished the season ranked #2 overall in the country despite a 10-5 regular season record and has made nationals 26 consecutive years1. Chain Lightning (Atlanta) finished #11 and has made nationals for the last five years in a row and 18 of the last 21. It seems unlikely one of those two teams will get upset. Third-bid earners Raleigh-Durham United (from the Raleigh-Durham area, actually, if you can figure that) finished #14 on the back of a nationals appearance last year, and had a solid regular season. A loss to Blueprint early on at Pro-Elite Challenge East (don’t worry, they beat PONY again later that weekend) and a loss to Darkstar (later avenged) were the only real signs of weakness. Still, those programs have stolen bids to nationals before and had outside shots to earn their own this year.
There are no teams like that in the men’s division in the Southeast Region. Nobody who was in that #18-25 range was gunning for an extra bid but missed out. The next best teams are #31 Florida Untied (Ocala) and #35 Cash Crop 2 (Chapel Hill, featuring lots of former CHUF players, too, by the way). They are the only teams on the second page of the USAU rankings website, and while good, strong, and regionally competitive, they lack some of the higher-end club talent on the three bid-earning teams and will have their work cut out for them trying to steal a bid. Alliance (Alabama) had a good regular season, finishing #41, but is suffering a bit from the mixed push in the state to send a team to nationals in that division. As a fun tidbit, the reigning Master’s Division world champions and nationals runners-up Boneyard (Triangle) will be at regionals. They already lost to Cash Crop 2 at sectionals, though.
Additionally, the first day of play will start pretty slow, thanks to the clipped pool format, so the favorites will get to ease into the weekend. But if someone takes an early loss on Saturday afternoon when bracket play starts, I’ll be sure to let you all know.
Southeast Mixed:
Finally. The crown jewel of the weekend. Real hoops as the kids are saying these days. Toro (Durham) and Space Force (Hunstville) earned bids with #14 and #16 finishes in the rankings, but ‘Shine (Nashville) is seeded #1 in the region despite finishing lower than Toro and Space Force at #19. Why? Well, they didn’t play sectionals and had a bye to regionals. Meanwhile, both Toro and Space Force failed to win their sections, losing to #29 Storm (Charlotte) and #50 Pyro (Huntsville), respectively.
Oh, did I mention that it’s a 16-team double-elimination bracket from the jump with two bids on the line? And that there are seven teams within the #14 and #31 national ranking spots? The yet-to-be-metionted final three are: #23 Murmur (Athens), #27 Conspiracy (Savannah), and #31 Roma Ultima (Atlanta).
Okay, so there are seven teams within 17 ranking spots of each other fighting for two bids, who have mostly beat up on each other in some form of fashion this year. BUT, there’s another team in the top 50 who’s already beaten one of the bid earners in the postseason. And in case you were worried about that being a fluke, I’m not sure Space Force wanted to lose the Sectional final as they had to then play another game to go to get out of a two-bid section.
Brunch Club (Durham), #43 overall, has picked up some nice wins over higher-rated regional opponents so far this season. That’s a lot of teams who can talk themselves into a semi-reasonable scenario to making a run to the game-to-go with just a couple breaks there way. Sure would be a shame for everyone else if there was one more team that, I don’t know, featured maybe the player for taking over in big moments as an underdog right? Hello, #47 FlyTrap (Wilmington), and welcome back to the Southeast Region, Jack Williams.
All things are possible this weekend.
That makes ten Southeast mixed teams in the top 50 of USAU’s club rankings who will be at regionals. More specifically, ten teams between #14 and #50. There is no top dog. No team is “elite” on the national level in this region. Every team has something to prove to themselves this weekend, and whichever teams find their peak form and consistency will be the ones going to San Diego in a month. You only get one do-over if you start slowly.
This should be electric. See you all out there!
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About the Author
My name is Noam Gumerman (he/him). I am from Chapel Hill, NC, and studied Journalism and American Studies at Brandeis University. I am a journalist by trade and have been playing ultimate for over half my life. I love nothing more than combining those two interests. Contact me for discussions, feedback, story suggestions, and more on Twitter (@noamgum/@breaksideulti now too!) or email (noamgumerman@gmail.com).
There is a little bit of confusing record-keeping on this as far as I can tell, but this GoFundMe from last year claims that making it to nationals last year was consecutive time number 26