In Premier Rugby Sevens, which stages its championship event in Washington on Sunday, eight teams field men’s and women’s sides and compete for a combined trophy as well as separate titles. For Abby Gustaitis, the US Olympian who has combined playing with commentating on PR7s, that level playing field is a chief part of the appeal.
“Equal men’s teams and women’s teams and equal pay, I think it’s just a great model to have,” says the University of Maryland grad, for whom the games at Audi Field will be a sort of sporting homecoming.
“There’s something about having that counterpart on the men’s side that increases the camaraderie of the sport. And the equal rules. It’s something that always drew me into rugby and kept me around. I love that equal playing field.”
Gustaitis plays for the Headliners, the defending women’s and united champions.
This year, “unfortunately, our men’s team lost a nail-biter in Pittsburgh, so they will not be in the finals. But it was cool to have them at the first two stops, for sure.
“We do our jersey presentations together, have team dinners together and just get to know one another. At the end of the day, everyone there loves rugby. It’s a sport built around community and camaraderie. So you instantly click and connect and bond with the other squad, which is great.”
Owen Scannell, the PR7s founder and chief executive, thinks his event is beginning to click into place on the US rugby calendar.
“This season has been everything we’ve hoped for and more in a lot of ways,” he says, of a competition split into eastern and western conferences, events in Pittsburgh, Austin, San Jose and Minneapolis preceding the DC final.
“We’ve been charting a strategic growth plan. From one event in Memphis [in 2021] to three last summer to five this year, doubling the number of teams, adding the originality. And I think this is the year where the real long-term shape of what this competition can look like is starting to show itself: being a standalone, sub-international sevens circuit with regionalised teams that travels around, that starts to build specific fans and connect cities to franchises.”
On Sunday, Scannell expects a crowd a few thousand strong. Next year, he says, the competition could extend into Canada.
The PR7s franchises are: Golden State Retrievers, Southern Headliners, SoCal Rhino Loggerheads, Texas Team, Rocky Mountain Experts, New York Locals, Northern Loonies and Pittsburgh Steeltoes.
On Sunday, the women’s semi-finals will pitch the Headliners against the Locals and the Loonies against the Experts. In the men’s draw, the Experts face the Loggerheads and the Steeltoes face the Team. Consolation games and finals follow.
The event will last five hours, with fan entertainment laid on, but it is not the typical sevens tournament seen around the rugby world from Melrose to Hong Kong. Instead of a whole day’s play – or two or even three – with pool stages played before knockouts, at the PR7s championship there will only be eight games, each lasting 14 minutes, for a little under two hours of rugby in total.
Such sudden-death competition heightens the “every moment counts mantra”, Gustaitis says, “because in any game of sevens, every moment truly does.
“The fact that at PR7s you only get to play for 28 minutes, maximum, is for me more of a ‘savour each moment’ type of vibe. Just savouring that time on the pitch with those people, continuing to challenge myself, to compete at that level, and know that the pressure is on? I’m into that feeling. That’s one of the best things about rugby sevens to me. And that’s one thing that separates PR7s as well.”
Rugby is about tight play as well as fast and loose: PR7s is tied into the world of elite sevens through the presence of established US Eagles like Gustaitis, Alev Kelter and Madison Hughes and through deals with global stars. Ruby Tui and Stacey Waaka of New Zealand signed this year, as did the England great Dan Norton and Branco du Preez of South Africa.
Such is the cutthroat nature of PR7s, Tui’s Retrievers failed to reach the championship event. Waaka, though, will run out with the Locals. The presence of such players, Gustaitis says, has been “great for rugby in America, in getting more eyes on it. We have more international people tuning in, to PR7s and the game in general”.
Top foreign talent also “elevates the level of play for the Americans, the club people coming through the American pathway. They have these incredible players to look up to, to ask questions and learn from. It’s just better for the sport in general and better for the growth of rugby in America overall.”
The US has hosted a sevens World Cup, in San Francisco in 2018, and in 2028 Olympic sevens will come to LA. After that, the 15-a-side men’s Rugby World Cup will be held on American shores in 2031 and the women’s event two years later.
Gustaitis agrees it would be nice to think that one, two or more boys and girls taken along to Audi Field on Sunday might grow up to play on those grand stages.
“Those are the people we need to start targeting. Those people might not have even picked up a rugby ball yet, that will play in that World Cup, which is wild to me. I hope they have picked up a rugby ball. We still have a decade to go but that time will fly by.”
The 2023 PR7s Championship will be broadcast on YouTube and FS1
