All-WUL teams spotlight balanced talent across the Western Ultimate League

Jamie Kauffman’s record-setting season anchored the Western Ultimate League’s 2026 All-WUL teams, which split seven first-team spots across six clubs and showed how evenly the league’s top end was spread. The selections, announced July 1, were built from MVP, Offensive Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year voting, so the list rewarded all-around value as much as a late surge or a single stat line.

The first team put Abby Thorpe of Colorado Alpenglow, Alex Barnett of the Bay Area Falcons, Cheryl Hsu of Seattle Tempest, Chip Yen of Los Angeles Astra, Jamie Kauffman of Seattle, Rachel Egan of Oregon Soar and Robyn Fennig of Bay Area on the league’s top tier. Seattle and Bay Area were the only clubs with multiple first-team picks, and that is the clearest marker of how the season’s best talent clustered around teams that stayed in the title race. Kauffman was the centerpiece of that group. The league named her MVP after she became the first player in WUL history to lead the league in both goals, with 24, and assists, with 29. Her 29 assists set a new single-season record, and her 161 Player Efficiency Rating also established a league mark.

The second team widened the picture without changing it much. Abbi Shilts of San Diego Super Bloom, Caitlin Fitzgerald of Oregon Soar, Eva Bell of Utah Wild, Kennedy McCarthy of Colorado, Kristen Reed of Arizona Sidewinders, Meg Manning of Seattle and Sarah Itoh of Colorado filled out the next seven vote-getters. San Diego’s lone second-team selection stood out the most because Super Bloom had played its way to the championship game, yet the broader awards pool still leaned toward Seattle, Bay Area and Colorado. Colorado placed three players across the two teams, Seattle three, and Oregon two, a spread that underscored how many clubs could point to at least one cornerstone.

That distribution matched the shape of the season itself. The 2026 WUL returned to conference play with eight teams, the Northwest grouping Colorado, Oregon, Seattle and Utah, and the Southwest grouping Arizona, Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego. The regular season ran from March 14 to May 31, and the same four teams that reached Championship Weekend in 2025, Seattle, Colorado, San Diego and Bay Area, claimed those spots again for the June 13-14 event in Portland at NE Complex @ UO Portland. Seattle finished the year by beating San Diego 13-8 for its third WUL title, a result that fit the awards sheet: the league’s best teams were also the ones producing the most complete players.