Former St. Mary’s captain Kevin Swiryn retired from all rugby in 2012 after a series of injuries left him unable to play anymore, but with time, the one-time 7s and 15s Eagle is back on the field, and thinking big … maybe.

 

“I am interested in seeing what I have left,” said Swiryn.

 

“I was broken,” Swiryn said of his myriad injuries that forced him to ask out of his contract with Agen and quit playing. “I had no interest in doing anything contact oriented again.”

 

But he took a job working in Seattle and started going to some club practices - ultimately playing in the Maccabiah Games, the Las Vegas Invitational, and then at the Elite City 7s.

 

“The goal leading into the summer was, I’m going to play, and if I’m having fun, we’ll see,” Swiryn told Goff Rugby Report. “I’m still not where I need to be, but it’s been really fun this summer. Now I have a few lingering things. I didn’t get surgery on a couple of injuries. But I am actually able to train pretty well.”

 

Swiryn will play for the Seattle Saracens  at the USA Rugby 7s Club Nationals this weekend, and then he accompanies the Seattle team to the World Club 7s in London. That will be, potentially, 12 very tough 7s games in the space of nine days.

 

“My biggest challenge is seeing when I grind it that hard week after week, how am I going to react,” Swiryn explained. “Nationals and London will be a huge test for me.”

 

Swiryn said that after helping Seattle win the Elite Club 7s in Houston in June, he was physically drained, but added that he has improved his fitness since then.

 

“I am interested see how my body reacts in the next couple of weeks,” he said. 

 

Does that mean we might see Kevin Swiryn trying out for the USA team once again? He is only 29, and after taking about a year off from rugby, and a year of slow re-introduction to the sport, he has given his body time to recover.

 

If he is healthy, as a player who was at the center of some of the USA’s biggest triumphs in 7s, he may well be just what the doctor ordered.