Eagle Men to Play in Tournament in November
World Rugby confirmed an end-of-year tournament for teams that did not compete in this year's Rugby World Cup.
The Vila International Rugby Cup will include the USA, Canada, Brazil, and hosts Spain in a tournament hosted by the Federación Española de Rugby in Villajoyosa, Spain. The new tournament will be played at El Pantano stadium over two match days, with the Men’s Eagles facing Brazil and Spain playing Canada on November 11. The winners and losers of the first round matches will then play each other for a tournament final. Broadcast details for the tournament will be confirmed later.
Eagle 7s Women Making a Serious Push for Gold at Pan-AM Games
With all the talk about Olympic qualification for the USA 7s teams, it’s important to remember that there’s another Olympic-style event on a nearer horizon-the Pan Am Games.
While the men’s team had to worry more about qualifying for Paris 2024, the women’s team had already taken care of Olympic qualification and so Santiago 2023 serves as a very important medal-winning opportunity. Through the assemblies and camps the Eagle women have been looking at the Pan Am Games as an Olympics light, and that light has a golden hue.
“The Pan Am Games is valuable to us,” said Head Coach Emilie Bydwell, who is expected to select a strong squad for the tournament. “USA Rugby has not yet won a Pan American Games gold medal and so pursuing that is important to us.”
GRR Analysis on USA WVX2 Game 1
The kicking game and managing the wind are key work-ons for the USA as they prepare for Round 2 of the WXV this weekend in South Africa.
Correspondent Hanno Van Vuuren, who provides professional rugby analysis for a variety of rugby teams in the USA, has some insight into where the Eagles succeeded, and where they didn't.
The Geography
Stellenbesch University's rugby fields are situated at the foot of a small group of mountains, and those mountains affect the wind. In the USA vs Samoa game the wind was coming between the mountains and swirling around un predictably. For the most part the Eagles played with the wind in the first half and played against the wind in the second half.
USA Women Hang Tough in 36-26 Win
The USA held off Samoa 36-26 Saturday in the first test of WXV2 held at Stellenbosch in South Africa.
Debutante Mata Hingano, who has been on the USA radar for almost 10 years, since she was in high school, finally got her first cap and was outstanding on attack. The Eagles, however, were vulnerable at times. Samoa looked to win the battle at the contact point and probably did win more of those than they lost. In addition, little skill breakdowns and moments of impatience undercut some promising attacks. The Eagles knocked on at the goalline twice, missed touch on a couple of penalties, fumbled a couple of key attacking lineouts, and made a couple of rather bad defensive breakdowns, and all of that made it a lot closer than it should have been.
Young USA Men's Team to Pan-Am Sevens
As has been the habit for the last couple of tournaments, the Pan-American Games will be a testing ground for some younger players for the USA Men's 7s team in November.
The Pan-AM Games have held a rugby competition since 2011, with the USA taking bronze in each of the three men's events behind Canada and Argentina. And while Head Coach Mike Friday usually finds some playing time for experienced Eagles, he also has chosen to rest some players and bring in those who are looking to break into the main SVNS (World Series) squad.
USA, Samoa Name Lineups for WXV2 Test Match
USA Women's 15s Interim Head Coach Milton Haig has announced the 23 players who will kick off the WXV2 tournament in Cape Town against Samoa on Saturday.
The game kicks off Saturday, October 14, at 8 a.m. ET, live on RugbyPass.
Autumata Hingano will make her debut as a starting back, while Meya Bizer joins the finishers list after earning her 30th cap in the Wales match two weeks ago.
Milestone Achieved, Meya Bizer Looks Ahead
Jenny Kronish, who was a late replacement in the WXV player pool for Evi Ashenbrucker, was also named to the bench.
Eagle Women Picked to Chase Gold at Pan Am Games
USA Women's 7s Head Coach Emilie Bydwell has named the squad to compete in the 2023 Pan American Games in Santiago, Chile.
The Games run from October 20 to November 5, with the 7s tournament running November 3-4.
The Eagles have never won the Gold Medal at this. The first ever PanAm Games to hold rugby was 2011, but that was a men's tournament only. In 2015 the USA finished second to Canada in Toronto. In 2019 in Lima, Peru they once again took silver behind Canada.
Of the 12 players named to compete in Santiago, seven were in Lima four years ago. Only Spiff Sedrick, Lauren Doyle, Sam Sullivan, Nicole Heavirland, and Nana Fa'avesi are new to this tournament.
Milestone Achieved, Meya Bizer Looks Ahead
As the WXV2 gets set to kick off in South Africa, Meya Bizer is (quietly) celebrating a milestone.
Bizer recently topped 30 caps, a major benchmark for women Eagles and for the former Woodlands HS and Penn State standout, getting there took some doing.
The journey for the women whose last name is pronounced Bit-zer has been long, but rewarding. “Just like for anybody there’s going to be a rollercoaster. I mean I got my first cap in 2012 when I was 19 and the world was my oyster. I felt there was so much to do and see. To be now, 11 years later, getting my 30th, it’s kind of wild because the game has changed so much. It’s grown so much. There’s so much more access to it for women especially.”
A Reason to Move for the Eagle Women
Headed into WXV2, the USA Women’s National Team has been chastened, humbled, and turned every which way.
All photos by Ian Muir
Now on their third coach in less than a year, the Eagles face off against Samoa October 14, Scotland October 20, and Italy October 28 in the 2nd tier of this world-league WXV. Warming up for all of this they played a scrimmage against Ireland, and then a test match against Wales, which they lost 38-18.
USA Women Drop 38-18 Decision to Wales
The USA women lost 38-18 to Wales in a warmup for the WXV Tier 2 competition in October in South Africa.
On a rainy day, Wales controlled the scoreboard for most of the game in a match where new Interim Head Coach Milton Haig ran out a side that was a mixture of experienced players and those looking to stake their claim.
“The weather was pretty wet, and the ball was reasonably slippery," said Haig, using the New Zealand term (reasonably) that actually means "very." "When we got the ball in our hands and we made gain line we looked good. When we made ruck speed, we looked really good. We’ve got some things to work on, Wales obviously scored a couple more tries and set piece scrum tries. That’s something we need to work on and can fix quite easily as we haven’t really done a lot of work on that."
USA Women Warm Up for Pan-Am and SVNS in Fiji
The USA Women's 7s team is targeting a Gold Medal at the Pan-Am Games, and the next step in that journey will be in Fiji.
With the Pan-Am Games in Santiago coming in late October, the Eagles need some game time to build to that. (This is in contrast to the men's team, whose World Series season went a little longer and was followed by the Olympic qualifier tournament that the women didn't need to play in. So the men need time off.)
So the FRU Women's Mini Sevens is the venue for a key warmup event for the Eagle women, with Fiji, France, and New Zealand. These teams already faced off in the first leg of the Mini 7s. The USA will only join in the second leg.
USA Rugby Confirms Signing of Tamara Sheppard as GM of High Performance
USA Rugby today announced the appointment of Tamara Sheppard as General Manager of High Performance.
Sheppard comes to USA Rugby after five years serving as High Performance Director with Swimming Australia, leading the world class organization across both men’s and women’s high performance programs. Since first entering the sports management world with Queensland Rugby in 2004, Sheppard has worked in rugby and in Olympic sports. Under her tenure with Swimming Australia, the program won nine gold medals at the Tokyo Olympics, their most ever (however in 1956 they won eight in only 13 events whereas in Tokyo there were 35 events). Overall Australia won 20 medals in swimming in Tokyo.
Sheppard will relocate to the United States and join USA Rugby headquarters in Colorado.
USA Women Scrimmage With Ireland
The USA Women's National Team completed a scrimmage with Ireland Saturday in Dublin.
The training session/practice game was designed to prepare the Eagles for a test match with Wales and then the WXV Tier 2 games this fall.
Some players returned to Eagle action this weekend after injuries and some other players—WPL standouts Paige Stathopolous and Yeja Dunn—are getting their first look. Hope Rogers will rejoin the team in South Africa for the WXV after being out with injury. Rogers was a mainstay of the Exeter Chiefs in the English Premiership, but she was used so much she needed some time off.
Emily Henrich, like Rogers a former MA Sorensen Award-winner, is also back from injury.
Sarah Levy, Jenny Kronish, and uncapped players Alivia Leatherman and Amanda Berta are in Ireland to train and be ready in case they are needed later.
RMA Podcast: The High Performance Question
In this latest RuggaMatrix America podcast, Alex Goff sits down with USA Rugby CEO Ross Young and COO Johnathan Atkeison.
The top? High Performance. What to do about a High Performance Manager or General Manager, the status of the USA Women's and Men's 15s Head Coach positions.
What the expectations are for the national teams and how that affects sponsorship, events, and hosting two Rugby World Cups.
This is an episode rather tightly focused on the national teams, including the Olympics and 7s, but also talking about individuals such as current interim Head Coach for the Men's 15s Eagles, Scott Lawrence.
Wild and Exciting Encounter Sees USA Over Toulouse
Playing their first home game in over a year, the USA Men's 15s National Team beat Stade Toulousain 24-21 in a very entertaining, end-to-end game in Sandy Utah.
Played in front of a loud and enthusiastic crowd, the game was back-and-forth throughout—imperfect in its precision but played with a sense of endeavor that was certainly crowd-pleasing.
The Eagles opened the game playing with serious intent and looked to attack both in tight and out wide. But there were little things they also needed to be careful about little things like being a shade late to the ruck and allowing a holding-on penalty.
As it was, the Eagles worked it wide and Christian Dyer had a few very promising chances—he just needed slightly better follow-up.
