USA Pathways Under Scrutiny Now More Than Ever
USA Pathways Under Scrutiny Now More Than Ever
Scrutiny, pressure, and perhaps some expectations are coming to bear upon several people involved with USA Rugby’s High Performance plans.
As documented in these pages, the underperformance of the USA women’s 15s team at the recent World Cup, and the USA men’s 15s not qualifying for their World Cup basically ensured two coaches wouldn’t keep their jobs, others moved on, and still more are certainly looking over their shoulder.
Within the USA Pathway department, Men's High-Performance Pathways Manager is in a slightly different position in that he’s not the first person you think of when you think heads should roll. His task is more long-term, so yes there’s scrutiny, and some pressure, but much of that is welcome.
“Pressure is exciting,” Keane told Goff Rugby Report. “There’s always pressure when you play. There’s pressure on the players to perform in camps. It’s part of competition. And yes we’re excited to have the focus on the pathways, but we have to perform.”
Over the winter break USA Rugby welcomed over 80 players into a camp that was mostly focused on ID-ing players for the USA U20 team, but was also looking at talent in other age groups.
The camp itself was partly an indication of how Keane and his department will go about looking at developing players. If a player is in a strong training environment in a college program, for example, maybe they don’t need to go to one more ID camp. Maybe they just need to keep playing.
“We had a lot of new players in the camp and some we had seen before,” said Keane. “The camp is part development and part assessment. We do need to see where they are and make sure the players come out of the camp with development plans.”
And getting everyone on the same page. As alluded to in our interview with new Interim High Performance GM Scott Lawrence, the teams throughout the USA programs have to be in sync at least in some specific areas. Yes coaches have to adjust their game plans based on their talent, but terminology and overall ideas should be consistent.
“How can we get results at the top level if we don’t offer support to the players before they get there?” said Keane. “What we need to is consistency; we need to make it all similar so it’s easier for the players as they move up.”
Competition
The question every year is: “what are these age-grade teams going to do?” Last year was a bit of a pleasant surprise because after little expectation that anything formal would happen, the U18s, U20s, and U23s all went to a tournament in the Netherlands.
The two younger teams played other national teams and won all of their games. The U23s played senior professional teams and went 1-1.
Was this Corendon Summer Tour the perfect opportunity for these teams? Maybe not. The U23s or Collegiate All Americans seem to have been promised a regular game with their Canadian counterparts, but it never comes off in any consistent manner.
The last time they played in 2019—we asked Keane if we might see a regular U23s/All Americans series with Canada, but it didn’t seem like that will be easy to accomplish.
Summer games for collegiate talent is difficult—summer jobs or internships often get in the way, and with rugby taking up sometimes nine months of the year anyway, some players need a break. Still, they all went to the Corendon Summer Tour in 2022 in part because the programs had been so dormant that they really needed to compete and set a bit of a benchmark.
The RugbyTown 7s works well for the U23s, said Keane, and serves as a good venue for some players to play at a higher level.
The U20s will be playing Canada U20s in a qualifier series in order to make it to the Junior World Rugby Trophy (to be held in Kenya this year). The big problem with this plan is that the team that loses the series then is done for the year, or quickly has to find something else to do.
The U18s could very possibly return to the Corendon Summer Tour. The 2022 tournament was a good test for the USA U18s. They beat the Netherlands 31-23, Canada 38-10, and Belgium 47-20. So those games weren’t blowouts.
One idea, then, for the U20s is to book a spot in the Netherlands for whichever team doesn’t qualify for the JWRT. But neither program is thinking about plans if they lose.
Pay to Play
“We need to get pay-to-play under control,” said Keane. Certainly it remains an issue where players who can afford it are more likely to be on major tours—some players might not have the funds, or have to work jobs during breaks to ensure they have funds later, or didn’t have the funds to make a tryout or an ID camp. It remains an issue.
For the summer of 2022 donors stepped in to help the programs, but that’s not sustainable. You can’t just keep depending on the kindness of donors each year to bridge the gap.
A player who makes every assembly and every game for a U18 or U20 team might pay $5,000 or more. That can be seen as an investment by parents for their kids’ futures—other sports or activities cost around the same or more. The difference is those are often for-profit camps and summer assemblies, not the National Governing Body-organized national team. The USA Hockey U20s in the recent World Juniors spent a slot of money to become great hockey players, but once they get to the national team, the costs are basically covered.
Still, with a roster of 50 players you can be looking at a total bill of $250,000. For the age-grade women, the costs aren’t much different. Is that where the funding should be focused?
Recruiting and Identification
As Keane said, players at the recent camp aren’t the only ones that are being looked at, but there is a nomination form and Keane said he is available to answer questions and entertain suggestions on players — bkeane@usa.rugby.
There is also a player development and nomination form that remains active. It's right here: https://pathways.usa.rugby/join-the-pathway/
Regardless of Money or Anything Else
This area of USA Rugby, the identification, development, inclusion, and preparation of the age-grade talent is going to be under intense scrutiny over the next few years.