September 25, 2024
By Evan Lepler

Perhaps we say this every year, but truthfully, filling out my 2024 UFA Awards ballot was tougher than ever. 

Part of this is the sheer number of talented players from coast to coast, but even more, I surmise that it’s the result of the continuous evolution of ultimate. Completion percentages keep rising, turnovers are becoming more scarce—except at Champ Weekend in Salt Lake City, of course—and overall, the best way to be successful over the course of a season is not to rely on one or two stars, but rather to lean upon depth, balance, and versatility. 

Consequently, it’s a virtually impossible task to get the All-UFA honors 100 percent right. They are a glimpse of groupthink, an evaluative moment in time where ‘supposedly’ enlightened and informed frisbee-philes make their selections, which are then aggregated in a points system to produce the list of honorees. 

Did the group get things right in 2024?

Reasonable minds inevitably disagree—one player, whom I deemed a First-Team performer, only earned Honorable Mention—but in the end, these awards do feel like an appropriate snapshot of the 2024 season, a year that was more unpredictable and fascinating than arguably any other year in the league’s now dozen year existence.

To dive a little bit deeper into this year’s honors, here’s a smorgasbord of numbers, nuggets, and nuance on the 2024 UFA Awards.

• Only seven of the 21 players named to the All-UFA First, Second, or Third Team this year were also All-UFA selections in 2023. The seven back-to-back All-UFA performers are Jeff Babbitt, Travis Dunn, Jacob Fairfax, Brett Hulsmeyer, Ben Jagt, Garrett Martin, and Jack Williams.

• Among that group of seven, Babbitt, Dunn, Jagt, and Williams are in rare air. Each member of this quartet has been voted onto an All-League team for at least five consecutive seasons!

• Astonishingly, the trio of Dunn, Jagt, and Williams are actually in the All-UFA elite for their sixth straight season, having been named to either the First, Second, or Third Team every year since 2018. 

• Interestingly, Babbitt’s first ever All-UFA honor came in 2017. He missed out in 2018, but has been deemed an All-League star every year since 2019. 

• Babbitt became the fourth player in UFA history to earn back-to-back MVP awards, joining Goose Helton (2012-13), Beau Kittredge (2014-15), and Jagt (2019-21). All four of these individuals have suited up for multiple teams during their noteworthy careers. 

• Among the 24 active franchises in the league, there are 13 different teams with an All-UFA player this year, with Carolina leading the way with four guys among the league’s top 21 individual honorees. Atlanta is next with three selections, while Minnesota, New York, and Seattle all have two.

• Just between you and me: I found it positively stunning that the DC Breeze only got one of the 21 slots on the All-UFA teams after a season in which they went 11-3, won the East Division title for the first time, and looked like the clear favorite heading into Championship Weekend before being derailed by the wind (Chill). My personal ballot featured three different Breeze, one on each of the three All-UFA teams, and it was hard not to include more.

• The Wind Chill, meanwhile, became the third team in history to win the championship without having a player named First Team All-UFA, joining the 2018 Madison Radicals and the 2021 Carolina Flyers. Each of these teams had at least one Second Team All-UFA performer.

• Colorado’s Alex Atkins is the first player to earn a spot on the All-UFA First Team without his team finishing the season with a winning record since 2019, when Montreal’s Quentin Bonnaud and Tampa Bay’s Andrew Roney both had standout seasons for struggling teams. 

• Montreal’s Tobe Decraene, the unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year, also became the first European born player to receive All-UFA recognition since Bonnaud in ’19. 

• The Madison Radicals snapped a six-year playoff drought in 2024; in a related note, Madison also had a player named All-UFA for the first time since 2018. Anthony Gutowsky got the nod as a Second Teamer after becoming the first Radical ever to score at least 50 goals in a season. 

• By the way, after Gutowsky hit the half-century mark for goals this past season, there are now just two teams in the league that have never had a player reach at least 50 goals in a year (including the playoffs): Boston and Houston. 

• Three playoff teams, the Austin Sol, Chicago Union, and Salt Lake Shred, did not have a player on any of the three All-UFA teams. 

• On the flip-side, the aforementioned Atkins, along with Montreal’s Decraene, San Diego’s Dunn, and Dallas’s Alec Wilson Holliday, were the four players from non-playoff teams that still earned All-UFA status.

• Only three players—Lukas Ambrose, Justin Burnett, and Antoine Davis—have made one of the All-Defense teams in each of the past two years. 

• Ambrose, who was a unanimous choice for Defensive Player of the Year, was the only player in the league to earn First Team All-UFA and First Team All Defense honors in 2024. 

• Since the start of the 2021 season, only Ambrose, Jagt, and DC’s AJ Merriman have been First Team All-UFA and First-Team All Defense in the same season.

• There were 10 different organizations that put a player on one of the two All Rookie teams, including four—Carolina, Colorado, Madison, and Seattle—that had two newcomers earn All-Rookie recognition in 2024. Seven other franchises had at least one first-year player on the All-Rookie Honorable Mention list.

• Most Improved Player is always a tricky category to pin down. I picked Oakland’s Evan Magsig, but I have no major issue with Minnesota’s Gordon Larson—who I actually also voted Second Team All-UFA—getting the nod. Beyond this deserving pair, two other names on my Most Improved radar did not end up making any award list. So here’s a friendly shout-out to San Diego’s Matt Miller and Boston’s Peter Boerth, two guys who were really involved, reliable, and, quite simply, superb for their teams in 2024.