World Chase Tag® dropped the full WCT7 Women’s Division roster today. Six teams. Three countries. One glaring absence.
Nano isn’t coming back (read our article about this).
Let that sink in for a second. The reigning World Champions, arguably the most dominant women’s team the sport has ever seen, won’t be defending their title in Paris. The organisation has confirmed the team is taking time to rebuild, leaving their crown on the table for someone else to claim.
Which raises an uncomfortable question nobody at WCT headquarters seems eager to answer: Does a world title mean the same thing if you never had to beat the best team in the world to win it?
The Qualification Problem
Let’s talk about how these six teams actually ended up on the roster.
Anarchy and Kunoichi earned their spots. Full stop. They went through the U.S. National Championship, competed against real opposition, and came out first and second. That’s qualification. That’s merit.
The other four teams? Invitations.
Now, invites aren’t inherently bad. The women’s division is still growing, and sometimes you need to seed fields to build the sport. But when only a third of your World Championship roster actually qualified through competition, it starts to feel less like a championship bracket and more like a curated guest list.
Valkyrie gets the nod as the UK’s squad. Fair enough. They’ve got the resume. Volt won WCT6 France. Also defensible. But what about Fakaw Women and Rooftop Queens? What exactly is the criteria here?
The Rooftop Queens Question
Here’s where things get interesting.
Rooftop Queens are, on paper, one of the hottest teams in European women’s Chase Tag® right now. They train daily with Rooftop Kings,yes, that Rooftop Kings, the Moroccan squad that’s been tearing through Chase-Off™ events all year. And the results speak for themselves: they took down both Valkyrie and Fakaw Women at the Rotterdam Chase-Off.
That’s not nothing. That’s a statement.
But here’s the thing, Rotterdam was one event. One weekend. Does a single Chase-Off™ victory justify a World Championship spot over teams with longer track records? Or are we watching a team peak at exactly the right moment?
The Dutch squad is either the most dangerous dark horse in this field or a team that caught lightning in a bottle. Paris will tell us which.
Volt’s Existential Crisis
The Lyon-based squad arrives in Paris as the WCT6 France Champions, which sounds impressive until you remember two things:
- They didn’t make it out of group stage at the last Worlds and didn’t win a single game during the event.
- Eva Yamani isn’t walking through that door.
Yamani was the engine that made Volt run. MVP of WCT6 France. The kind of athlete who could single-handedly swing a match. She was the reason Volt looked like potential contenders.
She now plays for Anarchy.
So what exactly is Volt’s identity without their best player? Can the remaining roster step up, or are they walking into Les Arènes with a target on their back and no shield? The French crowd will be behind them, sure. But energy from the stands doesn’t win matches.
Fakaw Women: The Home Crowd Darlings
Speaking of French teams playing at home, Fakaw Women might be the most intriguing roster in the field, for reasons that have nothing to do with their current results.
This is a young team. Really young. They’ve been grinding Chase-Off™ events across Europe all year, gaining experience, building chemistry, figuring out who they are. The talent is there. The ceiling is high. The question is whether the ceiling matters when the floor is still being constructed.
Playing at Les Arènes, literally their home venue in Évry-Courcouronnes, gives them an advantage nobody else in the field has. If any team can pull an upset through sheer familiarity and crowd energy, it’s Fakaw Women.
But upsets require execution. And execution requires experience. Do they have enough of it yet?
The Anarchy Factor
Let’s be real: Anarchy is the favorite.
Start with the leadership. Dara DePaolo runs the show. Owner of NYX Training Center, the first dedicated WCT training facility in the United States. She’s not just coaching this team; she’s literally building the infrastructure of American women’s Chase Tag® from the ground up. That’s not a coach. That’s an architect.
Then there’s Amy Baldwin.
Yes, that Baldwin. Ky’s sister. MVP of WCT7 US Nationals. And here’s the stat that should terrify every other team in Paris: Amy Baldwin has won back-to-back U.S. National Championships with two different teams. She took the title with Kunoichi at WCT6. Then she moved to Anarchy and won it again at WCT7.
Two teams. Two championships. Two years. That’s not luck. That’s dominance.
And now add Eva Yamani.
We already talked about what losing Yamani means for Volt. But let’s talk about what gaining her means for Anarchy. Yamani is a double national champion herself. WCT6 France and WCT7 US. She walked into an already-stacked Anarchy roster and immediately helped them win another title.
So let’s do the math: Anarchy is led by the woman building American Chase Tag® infrastructure, features the back-to-back US champion MVP, and added a double national champion to an already elite roster.
If this were a video game, the devs would nerf them for competitive balance.
Anything less than a finals appearance would be a disappointment. Anything less than a title would be a failure. They are the most talented team in the field by a margin that borders on unfair.
But there’s a shadow hanging over their potential championship run—the same shadow hanging over everyone’s.
They won’t have to beat Nano to win it.
The Asterisk Championship?
Here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to say out loud: whoever wins WCT7 Women’s is going to spend the next two years answering questions about it.
« Would you have beaten Nano? »
« Do you consider yourself the best team in the world if you never faced the best team in the world? »
« Is this title legitimate? »
It’s not fair. Championships are won by the teams that show up, not the teams that stay home. You can only beat who’s in front of you. Every team in Paris earned their spot (through qualification or invitation), and whoever wins will have done so against real competition.
But sports don’t operate on fairness. They operate on narratives. And the narrative of WCT7 Women’s will always include the footnote: Nano wasn’t there.
What We’re Actually Watching For
Despite all the questions, there are genuine storylines worth caring about in Paris:
Can Rooftop Queens prove Rotterdam wasn’t a fluke? A deep run would legitimize their entire program and put Dutch women’s Chase Tag® on the map.
What happens when the stars face their old teams? An Anarchy vs. Volt matchup puts Yamani against her former squad. Anarchy vs. Kunoichi puts Baldwin against hers.
Is Kunoichi closer than people think? They lost their championship-winning MVP to Anarchy, sound familiar, Volt? But silver at U.S. Nationals proves they’re still dangerous. Sometimes all it takes is one weekend where everything clicks. And nothing motivates like revenge.
Will Valkyrie’s experience matter? They’ve been here before. They know the pressure. In a field full of question marks, that consistency might be worth more than people realiSe.
The Bottom Line
WCT7 Women’s is going to be compelling. It’s going to be competitive. It might even produce some of the best matches we’ve ever seen in the division.
But it’s also going to feel incomplete.
Not because the teams aren’t talented. Not because the competition won’t be fierce. But because somewhere, watching from home, will be the team everyone knows they’d have to beat to really call themselves the best in the world.
Nano’s absence doesn’t invalidate this championship. But it does change what winning it means.
And that’s something every team in Paris will have to live with, whether they admit it or not.
The WCT7 Women’s Division takes place June 7, 2026 at Les Arènes, Évry-Courcouronnes, France. Quadside will be providing full coverage, analysis, and match breakdowns throughout the event.