• • Facebook
  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Reddit
  • Stumble Upon
  • Furl

Tommi Hughes of Elite ID and Samurai International has been lucky enough to get himself a summer in the USA playing for National Championship contenders NOVA from Washington. UR7s have helped 2 up and coming 7s players from the UK find teams to play for in America this summer (the other being Hamish Smales of the Kooga Wailers) and both will be keeping the UR7s community up-to-date with what they get up to, who they meet, the landscape of 7s in America, and finally how NOVA get on throughout the summer as they build up another assault for National glory.

This is my first personal blog of my time here on the East Coast of the US of A with the NOVA Sevens rugby team! I will be doing weekly inserts about my time here in USA with blogs pre and post tournaments at what’s going down over here.

I arrived on Tuesday after a nice 8 hour flight from London Heathrow to Washington Dulles International. Leaving the surprisingly nice weather of England, I sat down on the plane only for the captain to say it is due to rain when we land! Lucky for me his flying was better than his weather predictions as when I arrived it was a nice 80 degrees putting a big smile on my face.

I was welcomed by a lovely fella called BG (Bill Gardner) sporting a USA rugby t-shirt! He took me to his car and that’s when I felt like I genuinely was in the States, as he had only gone and picked me up in his 8.2 litre 600 BHP Dodge Viper, which he wasn’t afraid to drive!

We headed straight back to my house in Arlington which was a short 25 minute drive from the airport. Once there I unpacked and met my New Zealander roomie Scottie (Scott Fraser) and the new women in my life, Bailey. Soon after that we were off to training as BG didn’t believe that 8 hour jet lagged legs would do me any harm!

Went to training and was astounded to be around such facilities that a school has to offer compared to the UK. I arrived and met most of the boys, who are seemingly from all walks of life. One was a policemen and another a strength and conditioning coach for the Washington Redskins - who despite being 40 was still pretty pumped! It was great too of course see an old buddy and familiar face in PJ Komongnan. He had just returned from the UK himself with the USA team that competed in the last two legs of the IRB Sevens.

I immediately started to understand how rugby is still fairly up and coming over here by noticing that half the players were wearing American football cleats - something I wasn’t used to!!

With two weeks till our first big tournament at NOVA's home ground, it’s all training and keeping fresh till then. This Saturday I am travelling 4 hours north east to Philadelphia to a place called Bethlehem to help coach the NOVA ladies in a tournament, I will be running the 2nd team, which should be a really good laugh! Lets hope we get a win and I’ll be back after this weekend to let you know how we got on!

Tommi