USA 7s team Head Coach Mike Friday is looking to shake some things up this weekend at the Canada Sevens in Vancouver.

With the Eagles now 5th in the World Series after a 4th-place finish in Las Vegas, and with injuries and unavailabilities making for some roster changes, Friday has some wiggle room to adjust some approaches.

Friday long ago gave Carlin Isles permission to compete in this weekend’s National Indoor Track & Field Championships in Portland, Ore., and while injuries make handling Isles’s absence difficult, he has stuck with that decision, saying it would be unfair to Isles to back out now.

But that doesn’t make things any easier - Zack Test, Maka Unufe, and Will Holder are also all hurt. Friday has been saying for some time that his job is not only to win now, but to ensure that the 2016-17 team is strong, and that the buildup to the 2018 7s World Cup is a good one. That means giving playing time to young players, and sometimes taking a chance on someone; meanwhile, playing well in the 2016 games means not running your horses into the ground in March. And into the ground is the operable phrase here.

“We first and foremost need to recover the boys bodies as the surface has taken its toll on the squad so we will only be able to do minimal training this week,” said Friday, who said the artificial surface at Sam Boys Stadium was unforgiving (many players on other teams could be seen with tape on their knees to protect against scrapes, but it was just as much the hard landing that affected the athletes). 

The training that the Eagles will do will focus on fixing various aspects of play.

“We will continue to focus our efforts on trying to assert our physicality and accuracy in the contact area,” said Friday, knowing that’s tough to do when you’re keeping training hours light. “We also recognize we need to reduce our handling errors,as they are not at our internal KPI standards, and certainly contributed to us not taking the opportunities we should have taken which would have led to us winning that semifinal.”

Indeed, the USA, when they played up to their regular standard, were better than Fiji, and Fiji went on to win the tournament. 

Friday will also be looking for improvement in his team’s realignment in attack. He wants the players to really hit up onto the ball.

On defense, “we need to become more aware on our alignment and communication around the defensive breakdown so we can execute our one-on-one tackles.”

For all the little errors and mis-fires the Eagles showed in Vegas, they also finished fourth in the tournament. They had some difficulties (Unufe getting hurt was one, Danny Barrett battling through injury was another), but still won key games against Wales and Kenya to make that top four.

“I am very happy with the resilience and warrior mentality that the boys exhibited over the three days in the Vegas tournament,” said Friday. “And I am looking for the squad to continue and grow in this area in Vancouver in what is the pool of death.”

The ground may be a little softer in Vancouver - the artificial surface in BC Place is a little easier to fall on than in Vegas - but that won’t make the experience any easier. The USA team will have to dig deep in a pool that includes an England team very displeased at their Vegas showing, a French team that can sometimes be the USA’s bete noire, and two-time 2015-16 tournament winners New Zealand.