While the USA Men’s 15s team is looking down the barrel of a World Cup year, it’s important to remember that there’s a season after 2015, and after that one, too.

Head Coach Mike Tolkin and Performance Director Alex Magleby are already working toward those later years - when Magleby speaks he’s usually talking three or four or five years in the future - but so are some players. Some of those players were in camp with the national team at the end of February. We spoke with one of them - Ben Landry.

Landry didn’t play for a major high school program, and he didn’t play for a major DI college, but he has repeatedly shown up in high performance teams. The son and nephew of longtime rugby players Mike and Joe Landry, he started playing rugby in 7th grade in Milwaukee, moving on to the Kettle Moraine team, and continued to play in college, at UW-Platteville and UW-Whitewater. He played of the USA U20s, and then the All Americans. A powerful, hard-charging lock/No. 8, Landry makes no apologies for his rugby upbringing.

“My uncle and my dad played for Milwaukee Rugby Club’s 1985 championship team, so it was a big part of my life even when I was young,” said the still-young Ben. “I got a lot of my ball skills by training with them. We’d go to the park on Sunday’s and just play. Whitewater had a great DII program and pretty much dominated, if not in the Midwest, definitely Wisconsin. We had a nice rivalry with Minnesota-Duluth which we still have. And it didn’t matter where I was, in any sport I played I wanted to excel. But I also knew that to excel you have to put in the extra work.”

The 6-5 Landry recently moved to Seattle to play with the Saracens, and attended the USA camp. He’d been in All American and age-grade assemblies before, but his exposure at the forwards’ camp in January and then the domestic players camp was still an eye-opener.

“I was very excited to get a shot,” he told Goff Rugby Report. “It was a little stressful at first, but all the players and the coaches very welcoming. There’s quite a big learning curve to play at the next level, and in the first couple of days you really get hit in the teeth.”

It helped Landry that his club coach is USA forwards coach Justin Fitzpatrick, but still there was a lot to absorb.

“Being able to practice with not only coach Fitzpatrick but the 6 or 8 players Seattle had represented at the camp was great - some of the drills we do every week at Seattle we do at the camp. But it was also different. Getting exposed on film - they film all the sessions - and getting singled out in film sessions was pretty humbling. But it happens to everyone.

“I came back from camp with a lot of work-ons - my defensive slide formation, coming up square and not turning my hops. We’re learning a defensive line that’s complex because they’re throwing so many lines and blocker runners at you. It’s tough, but I like it. I like to see improvement in myself and the challenge is part of the fun. I would love to get on that squad for the World Cup, but I am also looking at the long-term and at longevity in my rugby career. I want to be at this level, and I want to be around for many years.”