Eagle 7s Women Making a Serious Push for Gold at Pan-AM Games
Eagle 7s Women Making a Serious Push for Gold at Pan-AM Games
With all the talk about Olympic qualification for the USA 7s teams, it’s important to remember that there’s another Olympic-style event on a nearer horizon-the Pan Am Games.
While the men’s team had to worry more about qualifying for Paris 2024, the women’s team had already taken care of Olympic qualification and so Santiago 2023 serves as a very important medal-winning opportunity. Through the assemblies and camps the Eagle women have been looking at the Pan Am Games as an Olympics light, and that light has a golden hue.
“The Pan Am Games is valuable to us,” said Head Coach Emilie Bydwell, who is expected to select a strong squad for the tournament. “USA Rugby has not yet won a Pan American Games gold medal and so pursuing that is important to us.”
The Pan American Games start October 20 and the rugby event will run November 3-4. But Bydwell didn't want all the players not selected for Santiago to be idle and so also took a group to Fiji, along with nine players who were selected to the Pan Am Games squad.
“We have made selections to ensure that we are competitive across both tournaments, fitting players into the competition that is more relevant to them at this stage, and not losing sight of the outcome goal we have set for this preseason,” explained Bydwell.
And that outcome goal is a gold medal at the Pan Am Games, which would be Team USA’s first rugby gold medal in a muti-sport games.
“We feel that both the Fiji team and the Pan American Games team we have selected could podium at a World Series event," added Bydwell, "and really the two tournaments are giving us more flexibility in playing time, positional decisions, and combinations than we normally get.”
So what that likely means is some playing opportunities for younger players. Yes Bydwell wants her Eagles to peak for Paris in 2024, but there’s a lot of rugby to be played and there always seems to be someone who is called up to the starting lineup at a critical moment.
“Our approach this year is to take every competition as an opportunity to cultivate the habits of winning, treating each tournament as a chance to win a gold medal and along with that really going one tournament at a time and celebrating each moment along the way,” said the coach. “It’s a very long year and with our preseason tournaments we will have a total of 10 competitions prior to the Olympics.”
So in one sense every single tournament is a practice Olympics, with a gold medal to win, but it’s also a chance to build depth within the residency environment, providing a wider group of players with exposure to the pressure tests that come along the way. With the increase in the number of competitions it also means more opportunities for players to get a chance to shine … but they better shine.
Bydwell has been clear that she doesn’t want any opponent, not France, not Australia, not New Zealand, and certainly not Canada in Santiago, to be considered unbeatable and also not to be taken lightly. So the approach has to be about thinking that way in every tournament, from Fiji to Chile to the SVNS opener in Dubai.
“For us to be at our best and maximize our growth as a team throughout the year we can’t be looking too far in the future,” Bydwell explained. “We need to be present with each opportunity and treat each opportunity with respect. We are clear on the things that we want to work on to continue to not only bridge the gap between us and the top two teams, but also not sit on the track waiting for those behind us to close any gaps—we must continue to evolve and progress. So really we are taking an integrated approach to the season. We aren't taking any tournaments off, if you will; we don't feel that we have that luxury with the goals we've laid out for the season. What we will do is manage and maximize our roster for every tournament.”
So the different squads for Fiji and Santiago also kick off everyone with the knowledge that they will need to front-up for the US of A at some point, maybe soon. It appears there will not be any experiments with new players. Sure there are young players in the program, but Bydwell will dance with the ones she brought.
“The things we are working on require time in competition, a variety of pictures, and high pressure situations. So we plan to structure our rosters in a way that takes advantage of each competition while still ensuring that enough rotation is happening to manage players, provide opportunities and exposure, and continue to foster internal competition,” Bydwell told GRR. “We are not going to look beyond Paris. We already have younger players mixed in and performing in our residency group and we have a strong development system that's been operating in the background that will ramp up as we stay focused on Paris in the next 10 months. We know that we are going to have more tournaments than we've ever had, but we also know that we are a very deep and competitive residency group at this stage. So we feel that through being thoughtful, disciplined, and calculated we can achieve our objectives around player exposure without compromising on performance or learning opportunities.”
It’s a serious approach to a serious, and demanding, year. It begins with an invitational in Fiji and a chase for a gold medal in Chile, and it ends in Paris with, hopefully, a USA women’s 7s team that is seasoned, deep, peaking, and, most important of all, healthy.
