The USA Women’s 7s team did what they needed to do after the initial disappointment of losing to Fiji, beating Colombia 48-0 to move to 1-1 and drastically improve their points difference in the Women’s Rugby bracket at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

The Eagles showed none of their poor ball handling from earlier in the day, and torched their Western Hemisphere rivals for eight tries in each half.

The game seemed to start slowly for the USA, but then captain Kelly Griffin zipped into a gap, attracted the attention of several Colombian defenders. She then offloaded to Alev Kelter, who did the rest.

Jill Potter went up for the restart, but dropped it, giving Colombia the ball, however, the Americans got it back when Victoria Folayan blitzed in for a tackle out wide, poached the ball in the tackle, and Lauren Doyle took the corner.

Some very good defense from the USA team bottled up Colombia for about 45 seconds, and that forced them to kick deep; didn’t help. Flayana danced through some openings and then linked with Kathryn Johnson, who offloaded to Kelter for the halfback’s second.

Then some nice ball handling put Johnson away, and she shrugged off a tackler for the fourth USA try.

The only worry for the USA was that they again got pushed into touch needlessly, but it happened only the once.

In the second half, Bui Baravilala and Griffin combined to break out of the USA 22, and then the ball was sent out to Jessica Javelet, whip raced around and under to score. She was set up perfectly by an excellent pass form Ryan Carlyle.

Johnson stole a lineout and Carlyle got a chance to keep it and go over, and suddenly it was 38-0.

The Eagles kept up the urgency, knowing that points difference matters if they want to get to the quarterfinals.

A weaving run by Javelet almost set up a try, but after a Colombia penalty, Johnson tapped and stretched over.

And finally, with time running out, Joanne Fa’avesi finished off a nice team movement.

So that made it 48-0. 

The USA is now in very good position to make the quarterfinals even if they lose to Australia on Sunday. The other teams in position to finish 3rd in their pool are all 0-2 with very bad points difference numbers. None of those four teams - Spain, Kenya, Brazil, or Japan - looked capable of winning by a large enough margin to bypass the USA.

USA 48

Tries: Kelter 2, Johnson 2, Javelet, Carlyle, Doyle, Fa’avesi

Convs: Kelter 4

Colombia 0