When the Atlanta 7s kicks off on Saturday, the US Eagles women will continue their hunt for an Olympic place. The top four teams in the 2014-15 World Rugby Women’s Sevens Series, on which Atlanta is one of six stops, will qualify for Rio in 2016. With three more events to go, the Eagles sit sixth on the ladder.

Finish outside the top four, and the equation for the women will be the same as that for the men – they will need to win a regional tournament in North Carolina in June, or a final repechage in June 2016. Much therefore depends on the form of Canada. They are third in the table, so for Ric Suggitt’s squad the road to Rio looks relatively smooth.

“We’re all definitely confident we can make it,” said the wing Jessica Javalet, one of the squad’s leading try-scoring threats, in the run-up to Atlanta. “We know we’re a talented team, we’ve just got to put together the performances we need and win the games that matter.”

At Kennesaw State University’s Fifth Third Bank Stadium, those games will begin with first-round match-ups against South Africa, Russia and the mighty New Zealand, who beat the US in the first two events of the season.

There is a sense that for the Eagles, after an outing in Sao Paulo that improved on the season’s first event in Dubai, the time to thrive has arrived. “This is the tough part now,” said coach Suggitt, during the countdown to kick-off. “We’re getting some good athletes and some good rugby athletes, so now there’s real competition for spots. You need to perform every day.”

Suggit’s words will ring true to Javelet. That she is a good athlete is without doubt – Javelet is seriously quick. That she is a good rugby athlete grows more evident with each event she plays. She has been seriously quick to learn the game.

Like the US men’s stars Carlin Isles (track) and Perry Baker (football), Javelet is a “crossover” competitor. Out of the University of Louisville, she spent time in the ranks of US national hockey (in the sense of field, rather than ice) and then had two seasons as a wide receiver in the Women’s Football Alliance, one of three women’s football leagues in the US – in the sense of gridiron, rather than soccer.

In 2012 and 2013, with the San Diego Surge and Chicago Force, she won two championships and racked up some fearsome numbers – she had 11 receptions for 225 yards and four touchdowns in a joint-MVP display in the 2013 title game. The switch to rugby took one simple phone call from Liz Sowers, herself a convert from basketball and football, to Suggit.

Playing football, Javelet was semi-professional only in the dedication it required while she made a living coaching hockey at St Joseph’s University, in Philadelphia. In rugby, she is at the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, near San Diego, full-time. The money still isn’t great, but all her athletic needs are met and the work is hard.

Javelet has worked to make the Games before. “I didn’t make that team,” she said of the USA hockey squad that went to China in 2008, “and that sucked. But training for Beijing was awesome, and I saw that process, that gear-up and everything. I was right there for all of it.”

She therefore knew something of what to expect a year ago, when she joined rugby’s aspiring Olympians. Nonetheless, she said, her arrival in her new sport “was like a baptism by fire”.

“’Here you go, here’s the ball, run with it. And pass it, but really just run with it.’ That’s what they told me. There were so many things I didn’t know: rules, the hand signals. Our foul or theirs? It was really intense.”

Before kick-off in Atlanta, Javelet had just five weeks to get a handle on her new game. At kick-off, she was greeted by both unseasonal snow and much more seasoned opponents.

“To come out and play Canada and Australia in back to back games,” she said, “well, I realised these girls were really, really talented. It was a huge eye opener. But I did my job and my team-mates looked after the rest.”

Asked how her gridiron experience has helped her transition to rugby – in a squad which has also included crossover athletes from basketball, ice hockey, soccer and, if briefly, the bobsled world champion Elana Meyers – Javelet said that as she played safety and cornerback as well as wide receiver, football has helped with defence as well as attack. She also points to an unlikely benefit from the hockey field:

“Defensively I’m playing sweeper right now, so there’s some of the communication that I learned in field hockey, playing center-mid, organising the front field. So it’s not as challenging as one might imagine.

“But yes, sometimes when there’s a big Fijian girl running at me, I think, ‘Oh man, I’ve got to tackle her.’ But yup, that’s my job and it’s what I’ve got to do, so I’m going to take this girl down right now.”

‘I wish I had found rugby earlier’

Leidy Arboleda of Colombia is brought down by a Venezuela player at the 2013 Rio Sevens. Photograph: Buda Mendes/STF/LatinContent/Getty Images

In a call with journalists this week Avan Lee, general manager for sevens at World Rugby, said the governing body saw sevens as a developmental driver for the women’s game both in the shortened form and in 15-a-side, in countries outside the heartlands of the game.

“There are skills young women can gain from sevens that will certainly help them in 15s,” he said, “as we’ve seen in the men’s game over the years. It’s certainly a great way to get young women to try the sport, because it’s very easy to pick up a ball and play, and it’s also great for introducing the game to those who have played basketball or soccer or hockey.”

Javelet, who arrived in rugby at the age of 28, falls firmly into the second camp of crossover athletes, whose numbers may recede if the sport stays in the Games past 2020 and national development structures correspondingly grow stronger. Nevertheless, she said Rio would not necessarily be her only tilt at the Games, and added: “Honestly, I wish I had found rugby earlier.

“When my dad watched me play in Atlanta last year it was the first time he had ever seen me play, and he came over and he said, ‘This is the sport you were meant to play.’”

When USA Rugby takes in Javelet’s success, which is best measured by her 19 tries in only four World Series events, it may well feel the same.



“I wish I’d found it sooner,” she repeated. “But never mind – I’m having the time of my life right now, looking to qualify for the Olympics.”



The Atlanta 7s kicks-off on Saturday 14 March. Continuous live coverage is available via worldrugby.org