America’s Rugby Sevens Teams Try to Restart Their Prepandemic Roll

“The pandemic throws momentum out the window,” said Rupert Cox, a rugby commentator for NBC Sports. “The key issue are the players who are battling back from injury.”

Because of travel restrictions, the U.S. teams played in only a handful of tune up matches, including in Spain and Los Angeles, limiting their experience against their potential opponents. Training against each other can be tricky because the players want to go all-out, but don’t want to risk injuring themselves or their teammates.

“You want to get better and you want to them to get better, but it’s nothing like competing against someone that you don’t know,” said Kevon Williams, another first-time Olympian. “It’s kind of a real fine line. We need everybody to go up to 100 percent. If somebody is going 100 and somebody’s going 50 percent, there’s likely to be an injury.”

On paper, the women’s team has an easier path to a medal. It should beat China and Japan in the group stage, and perhaps knock off the Australians. In the knock out stage, Canada and New Zealand are among the toughest marks.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/sports/olympics/rugby-sevens.html