Eagle Pool for Women's World Cup

USA Women's National 15s Head Coach Pete Steinberg has named his player pool for the 2017 Women's Rugby World Cup.

Steinberg beings back some experienced heads into the squad, notable Phaidra Knight, who made her Eaqle debut in 2000, and Kristin Zdanczewicz, who has played in multiple World Cups. In addition, Steinberg has named a large chunk of the women's 7s program - not a surprise given that Steinberg said in 2016 that many of those players would be in serious consideration for the Eagle 15s backline.

Also of note, the 2015-16 Sorensen Award Winner as the top college player, Hope Rogers, is in the list, as is former USA 7s captain Kelly Griffin.

Steinberg will be able to work with this team for two spring test matches, but, he added, the squad is always swimming against the tide when it comes to international experience.

"As a program over the past five or six years, we've really tried to push international competitions because we don't play enough," Steinberg told USARugby.org. "We don't have an international calendar that gives us five or six games a year, so we basically blooded a bunch of new caps in 2015 - players that now have seven or eight or nine test matches under their belts."

Of the pool of 44, 32 played college rugby in the USA. Only 11, as far as we can tell, played high school rugby. That is a small number (only 25%), but still represents an improvement over previous years.