December 26, 2025
By Evan Lepler and Adam Ruffner
Sometimes you just gotta go for it all immediately. Sure, we appreciate careful consideration and nuance, but every once in a while, you have to huck and hope. Welcome to “The Quick Huck", a new back-and-forth column where Evan Lepler and Adam Ruffner of the "Swing Pass" podcast will ask questions, offer perspective, and debate what the future holds in the Ultimate Frisbee Association. (CLICK FOR PREVIOUS EDITION)
Today’s prompt: Right now, knowing what we know, are you taking Boston or the field to win the East in 2026?
Lepler’s response:
So I don’t think there’s any doubt that Boston will be considered the preseason favorite in the East Division. They are the reigning UFA champs, Tobe Decraene and Jeff Babbitt—winners of the last three league MVP awards—are returning, and their supporting cast is young, deep, and generally underrated.
But the question here isn’t asking if the Glory are simply the preseason favorite in the East. It’s all about whether Boston’s divisional chances exceed those of the rest of the quintet combined. And for the uninitiated, there are many beasts in the East. DC and New York are perennially formidable challengers, and it’s not like Philly, Montreal, and Toronto are cupcakes either. Collectively, the East continues to be regarded as the toughest division in the league, and I expect that to remain true in 2026.
Still, a case can definitely be made that Boston is operating in a completely different tier. Let’s remember that they thoroughly throttled the Breeze in the 2025 East Division finale, and that demolition over DC occurred just a couple weeks after the Breeze had bulldozed the Empire in the opening round of the playoffs. The point here is that when the games meant the most, New York was pretty powerless to stop DC, and then the Breeze had no answer for Boston.
The Glory also relied on a cadre of young players in the postseason. Oscar Graff went 56-for-56 at Championship Weekend, while Orion Cable staked his claim as the most dominant deep threat in the entire league. Peter Boerth, Benjamin Horrisberger, and Wyatt Kellman were all coming off college seasons in the spring and still earned important late-season roles. And Decraene, by the way, is still just 22 years old.
All of these pups should continue to improve, suggesting that the true ceiling for this era of Glory excellence remains a moving target. The potential is there for Boston to embark on an Empire-esque run over the next half-decade, stacking championships and chasing history.
At the same time, absolutely nothing is guaranteed.
Maintaining hunger, focus, and discipline after winning a title is never a given. Even when a team says all the right things and keeps a championship core together, it’s natural for each season to begin anew with various challenges, unexpected adversity, and new identities looking to make their mark.
And as we’ve already established, the East, from top to bottom, is an absolute bear. Sure, we don’t know yet who’s coaching the Breeze, but they’ve already announced that Christian Boxley’s back. The Empire have added former First Team All-UFA playmaker Alex Atkins. The Grossberg brothers will be a year older in Philly. Montreal’s Christophe Tremblay-Joncas is the most underrated player in the league. And if just a couple of Toronto’s Europeans are back, the Rush’s seeds of potential that they planted in 2025 could inevitably blossom next summer.
Boston will also have a tougher schedule in 2026, with an interdivisional road trip making the Glory’s quest for back-to-back titles that much more grueling.
To answer the question: I think it’s really, really close. Boston’s the favorite, but I gotta go with the field. The rest of the teams in the East are all super strong, and three different teams have claimed the divisional crown in the past three seasons. The Glory are dynamite, but I’m still not convinced that they’re invincible, so I’m leaning toward some slight regression and another one of the worthy contenders rising up to meet the moment.
Ruffner’s response:
Boston has an extremely strong resume to repeat as UFA champions. In addition to the points you list about returning personnel, this is a Glory team that finished top seven in virtually every major statistical category in 2025, and will likely retain much of their coaching staff during a sea of change throughout the league. There was obvious top end talent on the roster, yes, but discipline and selflessness suffused Boston’s title run. Now finally equipped with some sense of institutional consistency, the Glory have the recipe for multiple Championship Weekend appearances. Add in Decraene and company’s very apparent appetite for more—“I’d love to be the hungry wolf on top of the mountain.”—and 2026 is looking like a boom for Beantown.
Yet one of the greatest truisms in sports is that the second championship is always harder than the first, and we’ve frankly never seen Boston play as a true frontrunner for a full season with targets on their backs. It’s hard to remember through the glare of their championship trophy, but this Glory team dropped three of their final four games of the regular season, and slugged out a one-goal win in Philadelphia to avoid a total freefall into the postseason. Some of the results were skewed by Boston already having clinched a playoff spot heading into the final weekend, but it was a very auspicious way to begin their march towards division and league titles; it’s easy to say “we turned it on when it mattered most” in retrospect, but can you imagine the difference in perception if Boston started 8-0 and then lost an opening round playoff game, say, in New York? Throw in their earlier nailbiters against the Empire and Royal, and it wasn’t exactly like the 2025 Glory were worldbeaters throughout their campaign. Boston had one of the best three-game postseason runs in UFA history—just 31 total turnovers, 24-for-29 (83 percent!!) on break chances, Decraene set a new single playoff record for assists (20)—and are now rewarded with having to sustain that level of performance for 12-plus games, lest the pack catch up next year.
The Glory love to leverage possessions like a boa constrictor, and they compound on opponents’ tiny mistakes over time. Take the championship game against Minnesota. Boston wrenched open a five-goal lead to begin the third quarter by reeling off four consecutive breaks, largely seizing on Minnesota miscues via pressure rather than outright takeaways; one of the few categories Boston ranked outside of the top 10 in last season was, oddly enough, blocks per game. This is a team of opportunists, and there just might be fewer errors in the future with opponents anticipating the reigning champs.
DC struggled with injuries last year, New York was in a transition phase, and Montreal and Philly were just beginning to get a sense of their powers. I think Boston is fully loaded for another deep run, but I’m going to take the field, be it in the East or elsewhere.
Note: There's like a 90 percent chance that in another couple months, when I have to make a formal preseason prediction for a 2026 champion, that I will in fact choose Boston. Just want to prepare everyone for that eventuality.
