Theresa Yu ’19 and her UNC Pleiades team are the Division I national champions in Ultimate Frisbee for 2021.

The Pleiades – not the Tar Heels, since they are technically a club team at UNC – won the title in dominant fashion, taking all four of their pool play games and then rolling through the championship bracket.

Yu, who plays primarily on the team’s offensive line, finished the tournament with seven goals and five assists across the seven games at the event, played in Norco, CA from Dec. 17-20.

The event included 20 women’s teams, divided into four pools of five teams each. Teams in each pool played each other once, with the top three teams in each pool advancing to the championship bracket.

The Pleiades, seeded second overall and first in their pool, won their first three pool games comfortably, beating Ohio 15-4, Western Washington 15-9, and UC-Davis 15-7.

The team had a scare in its final pool game against Georgia, falling behind 7-6 before rallying to win 15-12 in a game where neither team led by more than two until UNC scored the clinching goal.

The win gave the Pleiades a first-round bye in the championship bracket, where they faced a trio of West Coast teams. UNC beat UC-San Diego 15-7 in the quarterfinals and beat UC-Santa Barbara in the semifinals, also by the score of 15-7.

In the finals, the Pleiades faced Washington, who had upset top-seeded Carleton in their own semifinal game. UNC jumped out to an early 7-1 lead and never looked back, taking the half at 8-2. After trading points to lead 11-5, UNC scored four of the five final points to win the title.

It was a banner weekend for the school, whose men’s team won the Division I title to give UNC the first pair of titles for the same school since UC-Santa Barbara won both divisions in 1993.