The brackets for the USA Rugby 7s College Championships are starting to fill up and more details will come out about that, but details have already emerged about the tournament as a whole.

Held at Fifth Third Bank Stadium and surrounding fields, the R7CCs wil be May 14-15 and will have some new features we haven't seen in these major college 7s tournament yet. Most of this is centered around the player experience. Now other tournaments work hard to make the experience good for the players, but the R7CCs has several new approaches.

This time we're going to look at the accommodations.

Teams that attend are expected to sell a ticket allotment, but the payoff for that is that transportation, food, and accommodation are covered. The accommodation is in Kennesaw State University student housing, but before you think "cinder-block dorms from the Soviet era" let's have a kook at what that means.

Where the Teams Will Stay

With 60 teams expected, it would be very difficult for anyone to find hotel rooms. If teams were to find hotels on their own, they'd struggle to find good rates or enough rooms bear the venue. With this plan, the residences are all very close to the competition and warmup fields.

So what kind of dorms are they?

The athletes will stay at the University Village Suites. The setup here is a series of small apartments. Some apartments are for just one person, with a small kitchenette, private bedroom, and private bathroom. The others are for two individuals, each with a private bedroom, but with a shared bathroom and kitchenette area.

These units are then centered around communal areas where players can hang out and relax, as well as private meeting and presentation rooms for team meetings and easily-accessible laundry facilities. There is also, of course, wifi and it's wifi designed for college students who need their wifi to be fast and reliable.

So this is a far cry from having two to four athletes crammed into a hotel room. Every athlete gets his or her private space and, at most, shares a bathroom with one other person. And of course laundry at hotels for rugby teams can be a bit of a crapshoot in terms of handling volume.

See a virtual tour of the 2-BR apartment here>> 

Books, Medical, and Coffee

In the residence areas students who still have schoolwork to do will have access to study areas. In addition, after hours medical and physical therapy services will be available on site.

Once again, this is different from hotels where teams have to go elsewhere to find that sort of support. 

There is also even a coffee shop in the University Suites. While there are coffee machines in the apartments, and the teams are provided food throughout their stay (more on that in a different article), if the players or coaches want something and want to find a place to relax away from the rest of the team, The Peace Café right there in the complex.

Something Different

It seems a little strange to say this is different when it's student housing, something all the athletes will be familiar with. But this approach for a major collegiate tournament is different when it comes to a rugby event. What this does is provide something that's different to find in a team environment at a hotel—privacy—but also provides it in the context of a bloc of rooms that centers around a meeting and gathering space. So it's privacy with a better opportunity for team unity.

And the nuts and bolts of playing in a tournament—getting to practice fields, getting medical support, showers, wifi, laundry, and gathering spaces—are all more convenient than they usually are in a hotel environment. There are even communal kitchens in the buildings in case somebody wants to get a little creative with the food.

Staying in dorms? That probably sounds just fine. But really it's a series of small apartments for the players, and the cost is covered for each team by selling the ticket allotment.

For more on the R7CCs and for tickets, go here>>