LAFAYETTE, Colo. – The first Eagles Elite Training Squad (EETS), incorporating more than 50 capped and non-capped U.S.-eligible athletes, has been announced.

Following the inaugural Americas Rugby Championship competition in which first-time Men's Eagles Head Coach John Mitchell capped 24 new players in five matches, the coaching staff and high performance staff convened to enhance the program’s approach to elite athlete development.

“Congratulations to these athletes, selected to the first Eagles Elite Training Squad,” said USA Rugby Director of Performance Alex Magleby. “Now the hard part comes really, with increased accountability on the athletes to meet and dramatically improve the physical and technical standards that will be required to play at the international level for the U.S. Eagles.”

The EETS will be selected biannually during the Rugby World Cup quadrennial, with athletes working day-to-day within their own professional or amateur environments to reach the Eagles standard as it relates to fitness, skills, and overall game plan. The national team strength and conditioning staff, led by Head Performance Coach Chris Brown, will monitor athletes around the world with the assistance of the players' clubs and schools.

While a main objective of the EETS is to select teams for international tests and, eventually, matches concerning the qualification and competition of Rugby World Cups, Mitchell and the coaching staff have highlighted short- to medium-term areas of need in the player pool. These needs include aligning strength and conditioning and skill sets to the Eagles' new style of play and approach, aligning identification and recruitment to said styles and approaches, and establishing and evolving standards and protocols.

"We are kidding ourselves if we think we are as fit as we can be, so we have to find a way to bridge our gap in 15s to realistically and authentically compete against Tier One nations," Mitchell said. "We cannot do this without creating a model by where the players take greater ownership for targeting and raising their standards in their total distance covered and high velocity speed percentages daily. We need to find better ways to help the player implement to be in the optimal zone daily through guidance, supervision, and updating their daily work and volume."

Athletes outside of the initial EETS are not out of contention for selections to upcoming national team assemblies and camps, and will also continue to be monitored in competition. The coaching staff hopes the players not named in the EETS will continue to rise to the challenge of representing their country on the international stage, beginning with this summer's tests against Italy and Russia in northern California.

"The past has been very much about the inputs in test week only," Mitchell said. "The Eagles Elite Training Squad's intention is more about the whole of the inputs and the discipline necessary to their preparation before test week so that, in a test match preparation, we can prepare with the right intensity and training load to bring the right performance.

"In addition, this will surface the best players and raise them to the top to help us to select and create the best USA Eagles team mix for each test match while still having time to have an eye on the development of the best future talent."

PRO Rugby – the first professional rugby union competition in the United States set to kick off April 17 in Denver and Sacramento – has augmented the on-pitch hierarchy in the United States, giving on-the-cusp professional players the ability to ply their trade at the highest level domestically. Thirteen members of the first EETS – and four in the Eagles Development Training Group (EDTG) – will be playing in the competition, while 17 of the athletes are in residency at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, Calif., with the Men's Eagles Sevens program. The upcoming Rio 2016 Olympic Summer Games will remain the top priority for the sevens players in residency until their Olympic commitments have been fulfilled.