The 2009-2012 USA Rugby Strategic Plan made it’s way into my hands today. I had a chance to browse through all of the sections quickly, but I plan to spend more time in the coming weeks going through a detailed reading and interpretation of whats in it.
To summarize, it’s not anything we didn’t already know or have already heard about in recent years. There wasn’t any ground-breaking news divulged within it’s pages.
Pretty much the same old-same old… more focus on college rugby, growing the game at the youth and high school level, raising funding for USAR, making our National teams more competitive, etc. If you’ve been around the game in the USA for a while you already know the story.
As with their recent plans, USA Rugby will forever be judged on how they perform. The rugby public has held the current administration in fairly low regard, so this can go two ways. Either USA Rugby will make amends for the last few years or fall even deeper onto the public’s crap-list.
The one gleaming star that USA Rugby has in their corner that didn’t exist during the last strategic period is the United State Olympic Committee and they were reference quite a bit in the Strategic Plan. The USOC’s involvement (and mere presence) at various levels of the game in America could help push USAR into a position where they may be able to succeed in reaching some of their goals.
There is alot of information and multiple sections to the Strategic Plan, so I’m going to break each one of them down individually over the next few weeks.
Also, rumors of a revamped USA Rugby website have finally sprouted flowers. While the full page is still under construction, www.usarugby.org now sports a new splash page as a preview to the new website.
Stay tuned for more to come.
Monty
March 4, 2010
Anything in the plan about women’s 7s?
rugbyamerica1
March 5, 2010
Nothing specifically targeted at either the women’s or men’s 7′s teams. There was a bit on the USOC in regards to the 7′s programs and getting both squads ready to win medals in 2016. The plan, as a whole, was very vague on all fronts. I was a bit disheartened in that regard. After seeing previous plans, I wasn’t expecting to see much, but it would have been nice to see them actually lay out “how” they’re going to reach their lofty goals for USA Rugby. Instead, all we got was a list of what they want to accomplish.
We’ve seen lists like that for years and years.