This is our first assembly of the year. We gathered in Chula Vista, California at the Chula Vista Elite Athlete Training Center, which is our sevens hub for two weeks. It’s a really awesome place to train and reconnect in the beautiful California sun.
A lot of us had just finished our PWR season and then were playing in the new WER league over here in the USA. With lots of moving parts, to then come together and take a deep breath when we got to California was a good reset. We had two full weeks there, which gave a lot of time for connection. We also experienced a small earthquake on our way to training one day, which gave us plenty to talk about!
This is the best I’ve ever seen us look in camp. I felt like we were so well driven, and for the first time, we came into camp how we left off at WXV.
‘This Energy Never Stops’ – Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025
Usually, you naturally take a few steps backwards, but the whole squad has worked so hard to find high-level rugby and put themselves in environments to succeed over the winter, and that really showed. It was a good opening two weeks of camp, it was hard.
We had such a good two weeks of training, we were looking so well driven, so to put out a performance like we did against Japan was very disappointing and quite shocking for people watching and for ourselves.
We didn’t stick to our game plan, we went back to the old us. That game we played was us a year ago; that was not the current team. We took a step backwards there, it’s not on the coaching staff, they’ve provided us with everything we needed. We panicked in moments when we needed to be calm and we have to take ownership of that.
It was a big wake-up call that this is a big year, and it’s anybody’s year. It doesn’t matter the world ranking or the support you have or don’t have. That shocked feeling is something that we’re going to work our hardest to make sure we don’t feel again.
Fixture
Women’s Internationals
USA Women
Japan Women
In the USA, historically, we haven’t had a lot of games, both as the national team and at a club level. Now the majority of our team play over in the PWR, and more than half of them came to play WER. Most of our squad are now getting so much more game time, and that’s something you can’t mimic, and has definitely been something that’s helped our prep.
Our head coach, Sione Fukofuka, did site visits to all of the PWR clubs as a check-in halfway through the season. He got to see the environments we’re in, and I think he was really surprised at how different every team and setup is.
That gave him just a little more insight into how the teams work. Perhaps in one team, they don’t do a lot of extra kicking sessions, so he put a focus on that for those players, or for players in another team that do, he focused on another area for them.
Similar with WER, he has checked in with all the clubs and we also have our defensive coach, Sarah Chobot, who is the head coach of Denver Onyx in the WER. That’s going to actually help install some systems throughout some of the national team players. More contact time with our USA coaches has helped us know what they want from us when we come into camp.
Sione has been so instrumental to our team. We have not always had consistency with coaches, especially after the World Cup in 2022, when we had interim coaches for three years. We weren’t a team that could really build trust around a coaching staff.
He came in from day one and was really honest and said, ‘This is my game plan, but you have to trust it, it’s not going to come overnight’. He moved his entire family to Denver from Australia; he has four kids under the age of six, and he’s clearly made huge sacrifices for this job and this team.
We talk so much about the players sacrificing, giving up family time, careers, jobs, and moving, but we forget our coaches have dreams too and sacrifice a lot themselves to achieve those. His belief in us and his consistency are what have allowed us to improve.
This is a performance year. The building and the opportunity phase was last year and now we’re looking to execute our game plan. I know that we can get wins during PAC 4. The goal is to put out a performance that our team can be proud of and one that goes up each week. Whatever the outcome is, taking our performance one step up each game is the goal. PAC 4 is an opportunity for other nations to have our own version of the Women’s Six Nations.
There is so much support right now. Our game in LA was a double header with the MLR team, and we basically filled out that stadium. When we landed in Kansas City, we had fans greeting us and the town is so pumped for this game.
On our way, we also spotted Adam DeVine, the actor who plays Bumper in Pitch Perfect, at the airport. We all started fangirling and someone finally got the nerve to go up to him and ask if he could take a picture with us, so he came over and we got a group picture with him which was fun.
Another highlight has been our visit to the Kansas City Current soccer team. They were really excited because this will be the first non-soccer game hosted in that stadium. The goal is to play a World Cup game there.
I went to Penn State University, and when we were at the Kansas City Current facility, I saw a girl walking by and I recognised her, and then I realized she’d played soccer at Penn State. We would often cross paths when we were in the weight room in college. To see her playing at that level, having both come up through growing women’s sports together, was a really cool full-circle moment for me.
It was 10 years ago that we were both at Penn State playing for our university teams, and now to think that we’ve both been on the grind, working our way through women’s sports in America and paving the way for each of our sports is really cool.
At the moment, I’m rooming with McKenzie Hawkins – we’ve been roommates for every tour over the past year – we’ve got a good vibe going! We go to bed really early, she’s a really early riser. Once a week, we’ll do facemasks and put on a show, we’ll have a little girl time so that’s good fun. She’s clean, I’m clean, so that works out well!
McKenzie is very analytical, she’s our fly-half, she sees the game beautifully, so to be able to have the really detailed rugby conversations and to see the way she sees the field is really cool.
The rugby circle in the USA is relatively small, so you often find yourself in teams with people you grew up playing with or against, and McKenzie and I went to a high school All American camp together when we were 16, and now over 12 years later we’re both roommates in the national team.
We definitely have different groups of people in the squad who like to do their own things. There’s the coffee girls who want to go and find cute coffee shops, or you have the girls who like to go and get their nails done on days off. We have an anime crew who will gather together to watch anime or play games on the Switch.
I’m personally part of the card game group. I like to play card games and that’s how I get my cup filled. There are a few girls who, back in the day when DMP was in the Premier 15s, five Americans went over for their final season. DMP was not the best team in the league, so we bonded a bit over that, and we all ended up playing loads of card games and got really close doing that. They’re often the group of girls that I’ll hang out with on off days here.
We have ‘mini teams’ where you get assigned a team, and you’re a group for a whole year. We do little group challenges with them, so even before training, the coaches will organise a mini team challenge, and we’ll gain points.
Once a week, we also get dinner out in our mini team. At first, people were a little annoyed about it because after a big combat day, not many people were keen on going out with people they didn’t know very well, but once we bought in, we all now love it. It’s been a great way to get to know other people off the field.
Our game against Canada, as well as being our first PAC 4 game, will hold extra significance. We’re on track to set a record crowd for one of our games, and, Hope Rogers will become the most-capped USA women’s rugby player ever.
I’ve known Hope for a while, as she was at Penn State too, and she is the epitome of a teammate. She clearly shows her power, and she’s a game changer on the field, but off the field, she’s so kind and so caring. You would never think it when you see her carry, and it takes five people to bring her down! She’s part of our leadership group, and she and I take a lot of the cultural team activity responsibilities to work on strengthening our team culture.
She makes a connection with everybody despite her greatness between the lines, and that says so much about her. It will be a huge milestone for her, I’m pumped that she gets to walk out in front of a home crowd, and a record crowd at that, for this milestone. It’s the perfect occasion, I know she’s going to put in a performance that reflects that, too.
It’s a huge deal – rugby in America is still an infant compared to the rest of the world. To have someone reach that many caps and go past a record that’s stood for over ten years until this point, is an incredible achievement. You see players in other countries getting over 100 caps, but for where we’re at, this milestone really must be celebrated.
You can watch USA vs Canada live and for free on RugbyPass TV and the RugbyPass App, Friday 2 May. Kick-off 20:30 EST/17:30 PST/ 01:30am BST.
