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Bryn Chivers is the USA national team coach for the women's U 20's side and is also the Head Coach of the Women's Rugby Program at the University of South Dakota.
One of the main obstacles he has to overcome is getting all the High School and College coaches to recommend their players to the program. While the program staff works hard to attend high school, college and U19 tournaments, they still only see a small fraction of the talented players that they know must be out there. Chivers and his staff are constantly running camps across the US but he feels that they are not going to find the best players until the coaches take the initiative to promote the camps to their players. They get a lot of referrals from the top college coaches because the college coaches recognize a potential National level player but the coaches from the smaller schools are often unaware of the talent they may have on their team and these are the players the coaches would really like to see in 2008. The second major hurdle Chivers experiences in his role is one that women's rugby coaches worldwide would empathise with. While most rugby playing nations have age grade programs for the men, there are few who also have age grade rugby programme for the women. Getting fixtures is an ongoing problem. Last year the women's U20's team toured England and Wales. While the team was there, they also played Canada. Unfortunately, there are few other opportunities to play internationally at the U20 level. The squad is going on tour to South Africa in June 2008, with a reciprocal arrangement in place. The South Africans have agreed to field a U20 team for two games and then bring a U20 squad to the USA in 2009. The players live considerable distances away from each other, so evaluation presents its own challenges. They circumvent them in part by having a database of two hundred and twenty one players aged 15-19 yrs old whom the selectors have seen play representative level rugby at either the LAU, TU or National level in the last twelve months. Of those, they have sixty-five players targeted for an invite to the U20 WNT Elite Camp with another fifty five younger players whom they will track closely through 2008 with the intention of inviting them to future events. Camps are an integral part of the evaluation process. The camps allow the selectors to evaluate players in the same drills and compare them using the same testing protocols. Relative size, speed, fitness all play a part in selection but so do good decision making skills and a solid work ethic. All camp scrimmages are videoed, which allows the selectors to sit and watch for the nuances that might be missed at the time of the camp. Chivers career in coaching women's rugby started with him coaching the University of Michigan Women's side in 1982. From that time, he has coached several other women's college and club sides. In 1991 he accepted the position of Head Coach of the Midwest Women's Collegiate Select Side and coached the team for a couple of years. He had to use all his tenacity to raise the profile of women's rugby in the Midwest USA. By 1998, the programme at the Midwest women's Collegiate had been abandoned and he suggested to the Midwest Union that the time was right for the creation of a Midwest Women's U23 Program that would meet the needs of the college and younger club players. He was appointed Head Coach of that new programme. In 2005 the Midwest U23's won their sixth consecutive U23 National All Star Championships. At that time, Chivers felt that he had accomplished everything he could at that level. It was time for a new challenge. Chivers moved on to the job of Head Coach of the then USA U19 WNT in late 2005 and is now the coach of the Women's U20 Side. When he's not flat out with that job, Bryn is also the Head Coach of the Women's Rugby Program at the University of South Dakota. Chivers perceives the future of women's rugby in the USA as having the potential for greater growth in the next few years. In 2006 the NAWIRA countries saw double digit growth in participation of both pre-teen and teen females and this can only bode well for the future of the women's game. The coaches are seeing more and more young players coming to the sport from soccer and they are bringing with them an understanding of a field team sport that makes for an easy transition to rugby. The U19 INASC was a great success with teams from the seven geographic regions of USA Rugby participating and what was basically a USA U17 side taking the eighth spot. The quality of rugby and the intensity of play surprised everyone in attendance and Chivers believes everyone came away from the event feeling good about the future of the game. So what does such a busy coach do in his downtime? Bryn Chivers resides in a very small town in South Dakota (Centerville, population around 880 people) where nothing much happens and when it does you know about it from the folks at the local store long before you read it in the paper.
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