A Shift in Focus?
May 2022 came the announcement that many within the US rugby landscape had been dreaming of. The US would host not one, but two 15s World Cups! (The men’s in 2031 and the women’s in 2033, respectively.) Headlines were made, major news outlets were covering it, people were celebrating in the streets! Okay, maybe it was more like the very small percentage of our population who are rugby fans quietly celebrating to themselves, as to not let their families know they were looking at rugby stuff during family time, while reading about it via a social media post from one of the dedicated few who covers rugby news in North America. Nonetheless, the excitement amongst the rugby community was there. What the Soccer World Cup did for the sport in US was constantly brought up to help rally the base to start working in the same direction. With that a goal was set, having the men win a quarterfinal.
That was going to be our watershed moment. Winning a quarterfinal on home soil would help springboard our sport into the mainstream sporting landscape of the US. This would then lead up to the Women making the finals, if not winning the whole thing, of their World Cup two years later, cementing our sports place among the sporting giants. Our focus was set.
People and organizations started working towards those goals. Top tier collegiate rugby programs decided to play more 15s matches and less 7s. More women’s collegiate programs joined NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association). Funding was being put into the Men’s and Women’s pathways allowing the U18s and U20s to play more international matches. Anthem, a World Rugby and MLR funded team, was added to MLR (Major League Rugby) to help develop young American players. WER (Women’s Elite Rugby, check out The Big Guy’s article here) will be the first professional women’s competition in the US starting in March 2025. Both the Men’s and Women’s Senior National Teams are playing more consistent matches every year. All the pieces were being set, and then history was made.
At the end of July 2024, just a little over two years after the announcement of the US hosting the 15s World Cups, the USA Women’s 7s team beat, in dramatic fashion, Australia to win the first ever Olympic medal in rugby 7s for the US. Those bronze medal winning athletes made headlines, were featured by most major news outlets, caused people to cele… okay maybe people weren’t celebrating in the streets, but they still had non-rugby fans all of a sudden talking about rugby!
Not only did all of those things happen, but for the first time ever American rugby players became household names all across the US! Alex “Spiff” Sedrick (who broke two tackles to run 90 plus meters to score the match tying try, and then kicked the match winning conversion), Sammy Sullivan (the active service Army Captain), and of course Ilona Maher (who has the most social media followers out of ANY rugby player in the world, by far). This team of rugby players emerged as true sport icons from that moment. As such, they have reached heights no other rugby player has ever had in this country.
It wasn’t just these athletes who gained recognition, though. The sport as a whole was brought into the limelight. People went from referring to rugby as, “The game with the sticks?”, to trying to discuss tactics and tackle techniques. All of USA Rugby’s social media accounts exploded with new followers overnight. Google searches for local rugby teams increased exponentially. The Women’s 7s team winning bronze brought just about everything we, as a community, thought winning a quarterfinal in the 2031 World Cup would bring. Which begs the question, have we been focusing on the wrong event?
Through all of the excitement over the historic announcement that the US would host 15s World Cups for the first time ever; the fact that the Olympics, which will include rugby 7s, will be hosted in Los Angeles, California in 2028 was kind of overlooked. If having the Women winning bronze brought this kind of attention to the sport, imagine what having both the Men and Women medaling (heaven forbid either taking gold) on home soil would do.
If you were to ask an average American sports fan which they thought was more impressive, winning gold in the Olympics or winning the Rugby World Cup, what do you think they would say? Again, before now I regularly ran into people who genuinely confused rugby with lacrosse.
Now I’m not saying finishing well at the World Cups wouldn’t help increase our sport’s exposure, but there’s just a certain clout that comes from medaling, especially when it’s gold, at the Olympics. Also, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be putting effort into winning that quarterfinal, but there should be an emphasis on trying to get gold on home soil.
Yes, yes I know 7s and 15s are pretty much different sports at this point, but would you really try to make the argument that having both 7s teams walk away with gold wouldn’t help excite more American fans for the World Cups just a few years later? Maybe a shift in focus wouldn’t be a bad thing.
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