Colorado Springs, Colo. (October 28, 2026) – USA Ultimate, the national governing body for the sport of ultimate in the United States and member of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, announced today the Team Spirit Award winners for the 2026 National Championships that concluded Sunday. For the first time, the team spirit winners for each division were awarded after the close of the tournament, allowing spirit scores from all games — from pool play through the finals — to be included in the results.
The winners are Fort Collins shame. (mixed division), Washington Scandal (women’s division) and Washington Truck Stop (men’s division).
Spirit captains for the mixed team are Alex Daniels and Thomas Brewster. This is shame.’s first time claiming the team spirit trophy at the National Championships. With many players living outside of Fort Collins, the Colorado team is dedicated to training on their own — coming together for only a few full team practices. With limited time to train together, the team puts a high emphasis on making sure their chemistry is balanced.
While shame. won the Team Spirit Award, they had an uncharacteristically low finish in the competition standings. After finishing third in last year’s Championships — as well as in this year’s U.S. Open and the World Ultimate Club Championships — shame. ended the tournament in last place.
In the women’s division there was a four-way tie for the top, with Scandal achieving the exact same spirit score as the Dallas Dimes, New York BENT and San Francisco Fury. In this situation, the tie-breaker is the teams’ rank in the competition, making Scandal this year’s winner based on their second place finish. (Fury tied for third, BENT claimed sixth and the Dimes finished at 16.)
Lisi Lohre is the spirit captain of Scandal, and has also served on the USA Ultimate Spirit of the Game Working Group since 2022. This is the second consecutive year Scandal has won the Team Spirit Award in the National Championships. Scandal also won Spirit at this year’s U.S. Open, in what was also a four-way tie.
Truck Stop’s spirit captain is Aidan Downey. The 2024 Callahan Award winner moved to the D.C. area from Atlanta and is a newer addition to the Truck Stop roster, playing with them for the first time last year and stepping into the role of spirit captain for 2026. Downey, along with team captains Christian Boxley and Moussa Dia, shared that the team has been working to intentionally develop a culture that takes pride in knowing the rules, which makes it easier to avoid mis-calls and long discussions on the field. While this is Truck Stop’s first time winning Spirit since the team was established in 2005, the team had the Peter Farricker Award recipient in both 2025 (Alexandre Fall) and 2022 (David Cranston).
“The winners this year spanned a diversity of approaches to excelling at Spirit of the Game,” shared the event’s Spirit Director Travis Smith, “Some teams made scoring well in Spirit an explicit goal for the Championships. Others were successful because their program developed a set of core values that makes them the type of opponent other teams look forward to facing on the line. Either way, they demonstrated a consistent excellence that was recognized throughout the tournament.”
The full spirit rankings for the 2026 USA Ultimate National Championships are available here.
