The 12 captains of the HSBC World Rugby Women's Sevens Series convened at the Four Mile Historic Park in Glendale, Colorado ahead of the HSBC USA Women's Sevens, taking place at Infinity Park on 5-6 October.

The teams are preparing for their first tournament of the HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series 2020 and it marks the start of the Olympic season for rugby sevens as the sport prepares to make its second appearance on the Olympic Games program in Tokyo next summer.

The HSBC USA Women’s Sevens tournament was first introduced in 2018 and is now one of eight tournaments on the women’s series – a record number for the women’s competition – with six of those combined with men’s events. After a hugely competitive 2019 season, the USA is looking to build on a season where the Eagles finished 2nd in the standings, with 100 points, only 10 behind series winners New Zealand.

Both teams, along with Canada (94) and Australia (86) secured automatic qualification to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. New Zealand, USA, Australia, and Canada will be joined in Tokyo by Japan (Host nation), Brazil (South American qualifier), and Great Britain (European qualifier).

With the increased schedule and with the Olympics on the horizon too, the defending champions’ captain Sarah Hirini cannot wait to get started: "This weekend is going to be massive for every country. It’s about starting the season off on a high, making sure that your pre-season went really well and I’m just hugely excited to be getting to play alongside the girls again.

"We know that our success last year was last year and that we can’t fall back on what we’ve previously done," she added. "We know that teams are coming out here and wanting to win here in Colorado and we want to make sure that we’re doing everything that we can to try and beat them."

New Zealand will face England, Russia and invitational team Japan in Pool A.

Pool B sees the hosts USA and France paired with Ireland and the new core team for 2020, Brazil.

Appointed as co-captain alongside Lauren Doyle for the 2020 season, Abby Gustaitis said: “We’re hoping for a medal performance and to build on the foundation that we set last year and just keep improving tournament by tournament."

Many of the teams have incorporated altitude training into their preparation for Glendale, with Gustaitis adding: “We spent a few days up in Breckenridge up in the mountains which is at about 9,600 feet elevation and we ran a couple of clinics for youth rugby and then got to Glendale Monday afternoon where we hit the ground running with our training – we’re excited for the tournament.”

Brazil captain Raquel Kochhann shared: "We are so excited to show to the whole world what we have been doing in training and our hard work in Brazil to show our best on the world series."

Elsewhere, the bronze medalists in Glendale last year, Canada will tackle Australia, Spain and Fiji in Pool C.

The action gets underway at Infinity Park at 09:53 Mountain Time.

NBC Gold will show this on its OTT platform.