The USA Women's 7s team took third in Dubai and the result, overall, puts them in a nice position to challenge for an automatic berth in the 2024 Olympics.

Finishing top four in the seven-event will do the job. The questions, though, are ... are the Eagles improving, and are they objectively one of the top four teams in the world?

Day One in Dubai was really no different than how the USA performed in the RWC 7s. They showed they could score tries against lower-ranked national teams (Poland in the RWC, China in Dubai) but their attack wasn't fooling anyone with an organized defense. Thus they were beaten fairly comprehensively by Australia and, ironically, in both the RWC and Dubai edged Canada two tries to one.

But 2-1 is 2-1 and off they went to the quarterfinals. There the USA and Ireland played one of the more excruciating games in the tournament. It seemed as if neither team wanted to do anything other than call for scrums and hope someone missed a tackle. Referee Finaly Brown didn't help, running a very stop-start game and calling back the one promising quick tap by the Eagles for no reason at all. (Brown said Spiff Sedrick's tap wasn't near the mark when it was literally right on top of it.) 

Finally Naya Tapper somehow stretched over for the lone try and a dour 5-0 win.

But a win's a win. 

In the semis the Eagles were exposed by New Zealand 36-0 and if there was finally a game where fortune favored them not and they had to take a good, hard look at how they were playing, that was it.

So in the 3rd-4th game, they played tougher on defense, they played as iff two tries wasn't enough, and they ... won.

Tapper and Cheta Emba scored tries put the USA up 14-12, but that wasn't enough. On came Kris Thomas, and did what a sub should do and used her fresh legs to cut through a gap and go long range to score. It wasn't a niftily-constructed play to open up the line; it was Thomas putting on a bit of a move and taking the gap. But it was what she needed to do.

The pieces are still not there. How they set up their speed players isn't consistent. The connections often fall apart (offloads into someone's face, passes into touch). But it was ultimately an improvement. In the 3rd-4th game in the RWC 7s France physically dominated the Eagles and won easily. In Dubai, the USA players stood up to the French, and won. The younger players, Sedrick and Sam Sullivan, got more time and showed they belonged there.