Eagles Show Promise in CanAm Series

No, a 39-5 defeat isn't something for which many teams are proud. Neither is a 37-10 loss. The Women's National 15s team isn't pleased with either result. We know that neither game was indicative of our capabilities. We know we under-performed. We fell short of our mark. We also know that we are far less experienced than the Canadian side, and we play and practice together far less. In fact, we play and practice together far less than most of the top ten teams in the world. We realize we're shooting from behind the eight ball when it comes to together time. However, looking at our performance against Canada with that filter (the "no together time" filter), one doesn't see 30-point massacres. Instead, one sees promise.

Think about it this way. Let's say you've been lifting five days a week, following a strength program with the hopes of hitting a big number on your squat max. You've been training for a year now, and your gains have become incremental, but you're still progressing. This is where Canada sits. They've had lots of time training together and will field a World Cup team with most of the players having played in a previous World Cup.

On the other hand, the USA are like sinewy armed amateurs, who are just starting a strength program--with a good athletic foundation, but lots of room for gains. We had five new caps on this tour alone (and a few on the last on to France), the last tour before World Cup. We will only have a handful of players, who have played in a previous World Cup, going to this WC. And on top of all of that, we've only played 10 test matches, since the 2014 World Cup (on a tangent, the lack of test matches for the WNT is a separate issue that I won't address here, but I would like to leave this little tidbit of information: the Men's National Team played 10 test matches last year, and are slated to have as many this year...a year that is a Women's World Cup year).

If look at the match-up this way, it's not surprising that Canada are three to four tries better than us. However, with a July residence in our future, we will soon close that gap. The USA WNT World Cup squad will be living and training together for the entire month of July. That means more gains.

Now, this isn't revolutionary. Most of the top women's national teams already have a residency program. My point is that we haven't had this opportunity, and with it we can improve in leaps and bounds. This is why I believe the CanAm series showed promise. We've been together, as a squad, about six times, in the last two years, for about 10 days at a time (on average)--that's 60 days in two years--and still we compete with the top teams. Our problem is consistency, and consistency is what comes when you build habits, and habits come from practice, from "together time."

We won't have a lot of "together time"--we'll have a fraction of what the tops women's teams have--but we will utilize that coveted bonding time. Our team is a group of hard working women, and we will make the most of our residency. We have a good foundation--promise--and now it's time to build on that.