The USA 7s Tournament would be incomplete without a USA vs. Canada match, and this year, that rivalry played out during the final game of day two. Canada had rallied against rumors that it was in a downward phase and won its pool. The Eagles went 2-0-1 and impressed fans with a tie against South Africa, which won three of the previous four USA 7s. With momentum on both teams’ sides, they looked to deliver a loss in the Cup quarterfinals.

From the opening kickoff, the USA exuded confidence; in fact, the kickoff was the story of the first seven minutes. The USA got ahead two minutes in, when Danny Barrett barreled – as he’s wont to do – into the corner for the 5-0 lead, and that same corner was revisited twice more in the following three minutes. Folau Niua and Zack Test returned the subsequent kickoffs for tries in the corner, and the Eagles led 15-0 at the break.

“The kickoff is definitely something we look at, where we want to dominate going into every game,” USA captain Madison Hughes said. “If you’ve got the kickoff advantage, then it means you’re going to hold onto the ball a lot longer than the other team, so it’s definitely an area that we look at as really important. And I think in that game it showed you exactly why. The kickoffs were a really big reason why we won that game.”

But the USA wasn’t home yet. Wellington had taught the USA some important lessons in first-half leads, and Hughes was not going to re-experience the heartbreak of an opportunity lost.

“Last week, we were up three tries against Scotland, and we let that slip away,” Hughes remembered the 19-15 loss in the Cup quarterfinals. “So we reminded the team that that happened last week, and we couldn’t allow that to happen again. And we reminded ourselves how bad that felt. But if we kept doing the fundamentals, it would get even better in the second half, and we could get the result. But we needed to make sure that we did that and didn’t expect the game to finish itself off. We had to make it happen.”

The USA made it happen and expended the effort to keep play in Canada’s end. The team was eventually rewarded with a try by Carlin Isles, who took the ball in front of a defender, stopped dead in his tracks and made a knee-busting, 90-degree cut for the five points.

The Eagles won 20-0, convincingly, and are guaranteed a top-four finish. The team has not advanced to the USA 7s Cup semifinals since 2009.

“There are a lot of really good teams here, so it’s a hard ask, but that’s where we were aiming – at the top,” Hughes said. “So I think we need to start doing this more consistently going forward and hopefully we can do.”

The USA has nothing to lose tomorrow in the Cup semifinals against New Zealand, so here’s hoping they ride this momentum to a trend-setting finish.