Stanfill Leads USA Selects
LANGFORD, BC – Louis Stanfill will captain the Eagles Select XV as Mike Tolkin’s team begins its 2014 IRB Americas Rugby Championship campaign Saturday, Oct. 11, against the Argentina Jaguars.
Stanfill will partner Brigham Young University’s Kyle Sumsion at flanker behind John Cullen and Graham Harriman in the second row, while Phil Thiel will hook between Nick Wallace and Olive Kilifi. In total, the forwards have 94 caps’ worth of experience – 48 of which belong to the captain.
“He’s really made his presence and leadership known,” Tolkin said of the Seattle Saracens man. “He’s spoken to the boys when he’s needed to but hasn’t overdone it. I think it’s great for the young guys to see what a veteran Eagle acts like and to have him show them the ropes.”
USA Selects Captain Lou Stanfill on ARC
USA Selects captain Lou Stanfill, who captained Jesuit when he was in high school and Cal when he was in college, discusses his team's goals for the Americas Rugby Championship, which kicks off Saturday afternoon.
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Setting Example Hughes Ponders Captain's Role
The USA 7s team will kick off their 2014-15 IRB Sevens World Series season this coming weekend at the Gold Coast 7s, starting with Canada and following up with England and Argentina in a hugely challenging Pool D.
Those games will occur Saturday in Australia, and Friday night in the US, and either way will be a big day as the new coaching staff, some new players, and a new captain take the field.
The new captain is Dartmouth College senior Madison Hughes, who has all of four IRB tournaments under his belt. The England-trained rugby player qualifies for the USA thanks to his American mother, but he spent the key years of his rugby development in the UK, including at the highly-regarded Wellington College high school. There Hughes earned the notice of the High School All American team, and then the USA U20s, helping lead them to a Junior World Rugby Trophy win in 2012.
What is the ARC, and Why Do We Care?So USA Rugby announced the final group of players to participate in the Americas Rugby Championship. This is essentially the list named before camp, but without Chris Saint and Ben Cima - who were in there as cover at halfback fighting with a couple of other players.
USA Selects Pitch-Up with Seattle
The USA Selects faced the Seattle Saracens Monday night in a shortened game at Seattle's Magnuson Park.
The game was a test for the USA team before the Americas Rugby Championship in Langford, BC, and was played before a nice crowd on a very pleasant fall evening in the Emerald City. The crowd was all the more impressive seeing as the rest of the city was in a shutdown to watch the NFL Monday Night Football game between Seattle and Washington DC.
As for the rugby game, the USA Selects dominated the match in many areas, especially in tight with the forwards. The Selects scrum was overpowering.
"We are working on a better hip drive that is more explosive," said lock Brian Doyle, who has been out of the USA circle for a while due to injury, and enjoyed his return to the field. "We are working together better, and it's working out really well."
Prop Area of Need for Eagles
With less than 12 months to go until the Mens 15s Rugby World Cup and the prop situation for the USA is not at its best.
USA Head Coach Mike Tolkin told Goff Rugby Report that the news that Shawn Pittman was retiring from the game 11 months after suffering a concussion against the New Zealand Maori was a surprise to him. Pittman, said Tolkin, was heavy in his plans for the next 13 months.
Now tat won’t happen. Meanwhile, young prop Titi Lamositele is injured and out until January at the earliest. Tolkin, who not that long ago was looking at a stable of five props with significant test match experience, now has three props he can rely on.
USA Selects Named for ARCSEATTLE, Wash. – Mike Tolkin and the Men’s Eagles coaching staff have called 27 players to the Eagles Select XV selection camp Oct. 4-7 for the 2014 IRB Americas Rugby Championship. Brian Doyle, Zach Fenoglio, Troy Hall, Graham Harriman, Olive Kilifi, Chad London, Tim Maupin, Adam Siddall, Louis Stanfill, Kyle Sumsion, Andrew and Shalom Suniula, Phil Thiel, and Nick Wallace represent the capped Eagles contingent, while Andrew Durutalo and Zach Test will catch up with the team in Langford following the Men’s Eagles Sevens’ trip to Gold Coast Oct. 11-12. Doyle, who has not made an appearance for the Eagles since the Rugby World Cup Qualifier series against Canada in August 2013 due to injury, is one of three players from American Rugby Premiership’s New York Athletic Club.
Options and Non-Negotiables - Friday Gets 7s Eagles ReadyBy now everyone knows that the USA 7s coach Mike Friday and his assistant Chris Brown were going to lay down the standards when they took over the team, and even a cursory glance at the squad - the pictures of how hard they were working, the video - and you know that’s true. The team, said Friday, needed to improve technically, tactically, physically, and mentally, and he and Brown - and guest coach Phil Greening - were going to make sure they do. “Everyone always needs reminders,” Friday told Goff Rugby Report. “Our job as the coaching team is to help them maintain those standards, be that through carrot or through stick. Sometimes we have a stern word with someone, and sometimes we put and arm around him. We get our massage across in difference ways.” Friday likes a discussion.
USA Star Potter Has Cancer
USA Rugby announced Tuesday that 15s and 7s Women's National Team star Jillion Potter has been diagnosed with Stage III Synovial Sarcoma, a cancer of the joints.
Potter was with the Women’s Eagles in France for the 2014 IRB Women’s Rugby World Cup last month and helped the Women’s Eagles Sevens earn bronze at the 2013 IRB Rugby World Cup Sevens in Russia last year.
“Following the 2013-14 Women’s Sevens World Series, and during my time away from the Olympic Training Center, I woke up one morning in June with swelling underneath my jaw,” Potter said. “At first, I thought it could be a type of infection or a blocked salivary gland. After various home remedies and a round of antibiotics, the swelling had not decreased and my tongue was beginning to press up against the roof of my mouth. After six weeks had passed, the swelling was progressively getting worse.”
Unufe Poised for Something Special
Maka Unufe’s inclusion in the USA 7s team to the Gold Coast is an important step for the lanky young speedster.
Unufe first came to prominence when he was the key scoring threat for United HS in the 2011 High School Championships, scoring twice in a national final loss to Highland. Unufe was immediately tagged as a potential USA 7s talent, and was on the team for the Pan-Am Games a few months later, where he led the tournament in tries and won a Bronze Medal.
Soon he was in residency at the Olympic Training Center, but Unufe, dealing with a young family and trying to pay bills and forge a future, struggled with being pulled various directions and in 2013 signed a deal with an agent with en eye toward a pro football contract.
No one doubted his talent, but when he left the OTC, few were surprised.
A New Look for USA 7s Team
So we wanted to know what Mike Friday and Chris Brown would put together as a USA 7s team, and we got hints early on. Now we know.
The hints were that Friday looked for a few more athletes who required some grooming. He looked for height, and rangy runners. One guy he didn’t pick, Garrett Brewer, is still almost the perfect example of the kind of athlete he wanted to look at.
And he opened the door to the disillusioned, the misunderstood, the under-used, and the developing. So many of the players going to the Gold Coast 7s are players who were lost for a time. It’s telling that they are back.
So what type of team did Friday pick?
Tall. Garrett Bender leads the team at 6-4, with Danny Barrett and Zach Test just behind him. Only Madison Hughes, Peter Tiberio, and Carlin Isles are under 6-0.
Hughes Leads Eagles 7s to Gold Coast
CHULA VISTA, Calif. – USA Men's 7s Head Coach Mike Friday has named his squad to play in the opening tournament of the 2014-15 IRB HSBC Sevens World Series in Australia.
The selections follow a five-day assembly of players in residence plus several from outside Chula Vista. As Friday promised, outside players got the same chance to make the team as contracted players, and several from outside the Olympic Training Center made the squad. Chief among these is the new team captain, Dartmouth College senior Madison Hughes. The diminutive, speedy Hughes has been a standout as a player and a leader for the HS All Americans, USA U20s, Dartmouth, and College All Americans, helping the U20s to a Junior World Trophy win in 2012, and Dartmouth to a CRC title in 2012.
USA 7s Team Enters CampCHULA VISTA, Calif. – Twenty-eight athletes will get a final opportunity to impress Men’s Eagles Sevens Head Coach Mike Friday this week at the third Men’s Eagles High Performance Sevens Camp of the season. The HP Camp runs Sunday, Sept. 21, through Saturday, Sept. 27, at the United States Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista and is the last opportunity for athletes to play their way into the 12-man roster for Gold Coast Sevens, the first tournament of the 2014-15 IRB HSBC Sevens World Series, and most importantly, the first of the Olympic qualifying events. While 15 residency athletes will hope to make the Gold Coast Sevens squad for the Oct. 11-12 event, others – like recent Saint Mary’s College graduates and D1A Rugby National Champions Garrett Brewer and Kingsley McGowan – will not count out their chances to help the U.S.
Are Eagles Ready for 2015?It seems now we get to say this every four years, which is a good thing - preparation for the Men’s 15s Rugby World Cup appears to be better than last time.
In 2003, the USA team was in solid form when it arrived in Australia, and the result was a bonus-point victory, and a one-point loss in a year that yielded more victories, seven, than any Eagle team before or since. But … those victories included two World Cup Qualifiers in the early part of the year. One of the difficulties faced by the Eagles that season was an uncertain future - they didn’t know they were going to the World Cup until mid-April.
And then they had to play 13 test matches in nine months (and send their A team to another game).
15 an Issue as ARC Looms
The USA Selects team for the Americas Rugby Championship will be named soon, and don’t expect too many new faces in the squad.
USA Head Coach Mike Tokin is staring down the barrel of a very challenging 12 months, with the full Eagles squad schedule to host New Zealand November 1, and then to play Romania, Tonga, and Fiji during their fall tour of Europe.
They will then have another series of June test matches, followed by the Rugby World Cup in September and October.
Because he is finalizing his RWC squad, Tolkin isn’t going to be taking too many flyers on young, unproven players. But if he does, you might see it at the fullback level. While current Eagles Chris Wyles and Blaine Scully are accomplished fullbacks, there’s a dearth of solid #5s after them, said Tolkin.
