U.S. Rugby Teams Qualify for Olympics

The United States men’s and women’s rugby sevens teams have qualified for the 2016 Olympic Summer Games, winning their respective competitions at the 2015 NACRA Sevens Championships in Cary, North Carolina. The women’s team beat Mexico, 88-0, to qualify for the Games, while the mean defeated Canada, 21-5.

Rugby sevens will make its debut at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro after a 92-year hiatus for the sport. The United States won gold in rugby union when it was last played at the Olympics in 1920 and 1924. The 2016 competition in Rio will feature 12 men’s and 12 women’s teams.

Nine nations were represented at the North America Caribbean Rugby Association regional qualifier in the nine-team men’s competition and eight-team women’s competition, including Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The event, the first of its kind for Olympic qualification in rugby sevens, was hosted in conjunction with the Triangle Sports Commission and the town of Cary. The competition was played simultaneously on side-by-side fields at WakeMed Soccer Park, both in the Main Stadium as well as the adjacent Koka Booth Stadium.