Throughout Survivor 49, Sage Ahrens-Nichols proved to be one of the season's most interesting players. Seemingly never afraid to express how she felt to the camera, Ahrens-Nichols regularly made her opinions about fellow players very obvious. Whether it was refusing to hug another player after she was voted out, or being blunt about not getting along with a tribemate during the game, Ahrens-Nichols could reliably be depended on to be impressively forthright.
Now that Survivor 49 has come to an end, that part of Ahrens-Nichols' personality has definitely remained consistent. While she is currently on good terms with Shannon Fairweather, Ahrens-Nichols has continued to seemingly fearlessly express herself. Most notably, Ahrens-Nichols has called out some Survivor 49 players for pregaming against the rules of the game.
Sage Ahrens-Nichols accused several Survivor 49 players of cheating by pre-gaming
Before fans got to see Survivor 49 play out, it was already obvious that the season would go down in history. That is the case because Survivor's host and showrunner, Jeff Probst, revealed that two players were removed from the game before it started. For the first time ever, players had to be removed for strategizing before the game started. Considering that the rules dictate that players aren't supposed to speak to each other before the game begins, it was a big deal that some of them did exactly that.
When it was publicly revealed that those two players had been removed, it seemed like the integrity of the season had remained intact. However, it turns out that pregaming may have still played a major role in how Survivor 49 played. At least, according to what Sage Ahrens-Nichols wrote on social media, the season was deeply affected by decisions that were made during the pregame process.
As a December 2025 Parade article that quoted Reddit posts chronicling the claims made by the Survivor 49 player stated, Ahrens-Nichols posted on her Instagram Story about pregaming. Ahrens-Nichols posted to address fan theories that Sophi Balerdi had been bad for pregaming. While Ahrens-Nichols disputed those rumors, she stated that pregame talking before Survivor 49 was really bad and affected the season.
“I saw the theory about @sophiesegreti being ‘bad’ during pre-game in terms of talking. As some people know, I was the alternate for season 47. So I got the unique experience of being able to compare pre-game for 47 and for 49. Talking during 47 pre-game was a 2/10 tops (with ’10’ being the worst ever). Talking during 49 pregame was a 9.9999/10."
Ahrens-Nichols continued, "It was insane and caused our game to actually start during pre-game (and absolutely influenced dynamics within our game). There were definitely ‘tiers’ to the talking to the talking offenders (I’ll speak more to this later). But when it comes to Sophie Segreti, she was hands down the best behaved person in our cast. She wouldn’t even look at anybody during pre-game. I actually thought she was the alternate for our season since she wouldn’t engage with anyone.”
As of the time of this writing, Ahrens-Nichols hasn't named any specific players who were guilty of pregaming before Survivor 49. It is also worth noting that none of the season's other players have accused specific tribemates of breaking the rules before the game began.
It will be interesting to see if more details about what went on before Survivor 49 surface in the future.