Tess Feury will captain the USA team in the women’s bracket of the Youth Olympic Games later in August, and it’s a fitting nod to the leadership she has shown throughout her rugby career.

Feury grew up with the game, as her brothers Jake and Blaze, and her parents, and her cousins, are all involved in rugby in some form. Tess grew up playing flag rugby in New Jersey, and  loved it - so much so that she resisted switching to full-contact as she got older.

That changed when she went to New York to watch her brothers play in the NY 7s in November. Jake, who plays for Middlebury, and Blaze, who plays for Penn State, are pretty good players and worth watching, but what turned Tess around was watching the girls play.

“I saw that they weren’t all that different from me,” she told Goff Rugby Report. “They looked like me, and I thought, ‘maybe I can do this, too.’”

Only problem was, she didn’t have a team to play for. So Feury got creative and started one. Her father, Tom, said that if she wanted to make that commitment, he’d help her.

“I figured we’d start with 7s because that was more like flag rugby, and we wouldn’t need as many players and we could develop from there,” said Tess. “The first summer we didn’t take it all that seriously, but we had nine or 10 players, entered three tournaments, and won two of them.”

From there, the New Jersey Blaze team has expanded into 15s. Still numbers are a struggle, but Tess thinks that the more work is done in promoting the game in middle school, the more girls in high school will be interested in playing.

Meanwhile, Tess has found more success in 7s. She played with the first-ever Atlantis 7s girls high school team in Las Vegas. She led the Blaze to a victory at the HS Championships at the Surfside 7s in Stone Harbor, N.J., and has trained with the USA 7s team in Chula Vista, Calif. And she rightly is pleased to see more girls teams play 7s.

“It’s great to have different competition,” said Feury. “I think more girls teams are seeing how much fund we’re having at 7s, and see that they can be successful, too.”

All of this has led Feury to the USA Youth Olympics team. Like many athletes, she applied to be on it, but wasn’t really sure she’d make it.

“I wasn’t expecting to make the team, but every time they cut the list down, I was still on it,” she said. “Once I saw the list of players I realized I knew some of them and felt I could keep up with them. Then I decided that I needed to be seen, also, so I went to camps, contacted the coaches to ask what I needed to do. I think that helped.”

Ultimately, Feury was not only named to the USA team but was also named captain, and really it’s little surprise. She has been playing rugby longer than most of the girls on the team, and she has a 7s mindset.

“I feel that I can bring a bit of a rugby IQ to the game,” she said. “And as a leader I need to bring composure. I was born fast - it runs in the family, so I have speed, and I am pretty comfortable playing 7s.”

The USA team will be in Nanjing for the Youth Olympics for the entirety of the two-week event - that’s one of the rules, all athletes stay the whole time.

“I think it works out perfect for us because we start right after the opening ceremonies, and so it’s kind of all business,” said Feury. “Then once we’re done we can enjoy it as a cultural experience. But first of all, we want to win a medal, and that’s why we’re there.”

Tess Feury is our Aircraft Charter Solutions Girls HS Player of the Week.