USA Women’s Sevens RWC7s 2018 Squad

USA Rugby Women’s Eagles Sevens Head Coach Richie Walker announced the 12 athlete squad to the Rugby World Cup Sevens 2018 that will be held at AT&T Park in San Francisco, July 20-22.

The Rugby World Cup Sevens has adopted a knockout format for the tournament. The USA is seeded fifth and will face China in the Round of 16 at 12:34 pm PT on Friday, July 20. The United States must remain undefeated to advance and to contend for the Championship. A limited number of tickets are still available at rwcsevens.com/tickets while all matches will be broadcast LIVE across NBC Networks.

Richie Walker said that “We’ve really spent the last several weeks evaluating where our focus and our mindset needs to be in order to perform to the best of our ability. Our players have been building towards this tournament for years and to represent their country at home is remarkable in and of itself. We look forward to sharing our journey with home fans in San Francisco.”

The Women’s Eagles Sevens team is an experienced one with nine of the twelve athletes having played in the 2017 Women’s Rugby World Cup. Four also competed in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games with only Ilona Maher a new addition. Maher debuted in Paris last month and had two tries.

Nicole Heavirland will captain the team. Leading the attack is Naya Tapper (130 points) and Alev Kelter (138 points) who finished the season ranked fourth in most tries and most points scored by a player, respectively. Lauren Doyle scored in all but one match in Paris and Kris Thomas brings 50 career tries into the tournament.

The Women’s Sevens completed the 2017-18 HSBC World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series in fifth place. Their highest finish was a silver medal at the Dubai Sevens and they also had a bronze medal at Langford Sevens, the first time the team has medaled twice in a season.

The team also concluded the season with four top 5 statistical category performances. This included the most points scored (5th), most tries scored (5th), restarts (5th) and conversions (4th). With the Rugby World Cup Sevens in the United States for the first time, this should spur the team on to showcase their talent.