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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 two 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.

So after settling in last week, my official first weekend here in America is now done and dusted. What a weekend it was!

We woke up at the sociable hour of 4am (was still nice and hot outside) to travel 4 hours to Philadelphia with the NOVA ladies to take their place at the Lehigh Valley 7s. Having not seen much female rugby at all, I was intrigued to see how big an event it was and what kind of crowds it would draw.

So with the sun on our backs we arrived with three NOVA ladies teams all raring to go. I was in charge of the 2nds, or the NOVALETTES as we became, and our first game was against our old rivals the Maryland Exiles. After a shakey start we eventually won through and that seemed to set the tone for the day, as we went onto to win all our group games. In the Quarter-Finals we were matched up against the MD Exiles and it what proved to be a very even and tight game of rugby, with some dubious refereeing if I say so myself, we just lost out.

We then went on to the Plate Semis where we stormed through a weak Lancaster Thorns side to play Harrisburg in the Plate Final. At this point Harrisburg had probably had enough of NOVA, having already played against our 3rd side and our 1sts twice! In another close final my girls came out on top and it was a great way to cap off my first day with them.

We went to watch the first team in the Cup Final against Keysnote, who themselves had a number of USA Eagles players who played in the recent Sevens World Cup in their side. Again there seemed to be a few dodgy refereeing calls and some bounces not quite going NOVA's way! They might have just lost out but I told them in no uncertain terms there was only one winner today… and that was NOVA rugby!

The atmosphere at Lehigh Valley was cracking, and it was refreshing to see so many people turn out to watch female rugby. Another feature of the day for me was to witness the sheer number of women playing in the tourney! There was no shortage of players and some of the rugby was fantastic to watch at times, better than some of boys back in the UK (and of course definitely better looking!). There was also a men’s competition going on but it genuinely seemed to come second to the ladies, with the crowd more interested in following the girls, which again was another refreshing aspect of the day that I perhaps wasn’t used to.

It seems that over here people often prefer to see teams that are up-and-coming and genuinely willing to train hard. All the players are keen to improve themselves by constantly asking questions and the effort levels are second to none. With rugby still developing slowly I suppose you are bound to see some improvements required when it comes to refereeing, but with a growing education that is of course feasible!

This week is going to be a quiet one, doing my own personal training and looking after the Ladies again. We have a tournament in Washington this weekend where we are also taking a men’s 2nds side down - so it might give me a chance to pop on for them and test my legs.

My next installment will be after this weekend to hopefully report of another win for my NOVALETTES. Take it easy y’all!

Tommi
For everything 7s