USA Women’s Eagles 7s Want To “Let those beautiful moments in practice shine on the field”
At the Emirates Dubai 7s last weekend we caught up with two USA Women’s Eagles 7s players of Asian heritage, Alena Olsen (Olympian and bronze medalist and now the women’s co-captain), and Jessica Lu who made her debut at the HSBC Singapore SVNS earlier in 2024 and was appearing in her second SVNS event. Both players are in action at the Cape Town SVNS 2024.
Alena is of Filipino heritage and is now one of the most experienced players in the new-look USA Women’s team who have been riding a wave of media attention since they won bronze at the Olympics in Paris 2024. With 130 matches on the SVNS series under her belt, she is the co-captain this season.
The USA Women Eagles 7s finished 5th in Dubai, beating Ireland 17-7 to wrap up a successful weekend considering the side has six debutantes at the tournament.
The co-captain told us about the experience at the opening SVNS 2024-2025 leg “I’m really happy. It’s brought me a lot of joy to see how many new players were able to step on the field for the first time and score a try for the first time, and just all of these things for the first time.
It was emotional being able to see those things. Honestly, I think it went better than I expected it to go, just because it was really hard to gauge how we were gonna do on the world stage altogether, not having been there before, but also how other teams with a lot of new debutants were going to perform in comparison.
So with all that uncertainty, around how the results would go we were really focused on what internally we wanted to accomplish within our own team.”
Olsen visited Southeast Asia before last season’s SVNS Series and also handed out the jerseys to the Philippines Women’s 7s before the SEA Sevens 2024 at the Singapore SVNS leg last season.
Jessica Lu made her debut at that Sungapore leg and she had her family from China attend in Singapore and again in Dubai. “Yeah they are here (she said with a big grin). Our team looks really different this year, and that uncertainty could be hard to deal with, but I think it’s also really exciting because we’re not the only team that has so many changes. It’s been interesting to see how other teams have developed, and I personally feel like we grew a little with each game, so I’m happy with that.”
The four-year Olympic cycle for the Sevens is in full swing as the two opening rounds of the SVNS will see more than 100 debutantes in action across the 24 teams.
Olsen said, “I think we had a lot of players stay over in the previous cycle and I think we knew we were gonna have a big turnover after Paris 2024, but what we didn’t know was how many and who were gonna fill the shoes. A lot of the faces in our team might be unfamiliar to people – they’re very new, or they’re very new to rugby even.”
Jessica Lu added, “I think with so many new people, it’s a good opportunity to completely develop our game in a different way. So because they’re so new, because we have a new team, it’s easy to mould them into a more flexible development pattern So that’s cool.
We asked Jessica as a young player on the SVNS herself what it meant to have fresh energy in the squad. “I think it’s cool seeing people discover the joys of being here for the first time. That’s just really infectious.”
Olsen said of the expectations for the team; “Our expectation is to grow and there are things that we want as part of our game plan and implement the things that we’ve been working on and see if we can put them in place out on the field. Can we do those things under pressure?
Of course, we want to win, but I think we still haven’t quite accomplished on-field what we’ve been training every single day for, and so we are trying to let those beautiful moments in practice shine on the field when it matters.”
The USA Women’s Eagles 7s are in Pool D at the Cape Town SVNS 2024 and will face Fiji and GB.
Rugby Sevens News
- Cape Town SVNS 2024 – Ultimate Fan Guide.
- World Rugby HSBC Sevens Challenger 2025 Details Announced.
- Fans Guide To HSBC SVNS Series 2024-2025.
- Australian Women Make It 5 In a Row and Fiji Men Win First Emirates Dubai 7s Since 2016.