Club 7s Nationals – Women’s Wrap-Up 2026

Club 7s is done and dusted, and WHAT a WEEKEND it was. If you didn’t get the chance to make it out to Madison this year, hopefully you were catching up on all the action online thanks to the multi-field streaming provided by Next Level Rugby and the USA Senior Club Council. If you didn’t catch any of the action, what on earth were you doing? Lucky for you, I’ve got a neat little summary of the weekend to catch you up to full speed, or refresh some of the smaller details if you were there and just overwhelmed by it all.

Here’s how it’s going to work- I’ve got all the results from the pools, those come first. From there the teams split into either the Bowl or the Cup quarterfinals. I’ll cover those in separate sections though all the games were happening at the same time. Both the Bowl and the Cup knockouts split further into the Plate and Shield, but I explain it all below, don’t worry. As always, these write-ups are coming from someone who was indeed at the tournament, but couldn’t watch every single game – so I infer a lot from the scores posted on the tournify app. If there’s mistakes, I apologize; not only am I human, but I’m a referee, and we make a LOT of mistakes. With that covered, let’s get into the action!

We’re going to start off the action with Pool A. The Chicago Lions were the favorites entering this tournament; they were the defending National Champs and the Midwest Champions. They trained in Chula Vista prior to the 2026 season, scrimmaging against Olympic-medal winning international sides. So it’s not that surprising they went 3-0; but looking at the scorelines, it wasn’t a breeze for the Lions. They took down the Colorado Grey Wolves 38-0 in the first match, then squared up against the Oregon Jesters 19-7. Their final pool match of the day was only a five point win over the San Diego Surfers, 15-10. Had the Lions made all of their conversions it would have looked a bit more impressive, but that’s still just one try between the two of them. The San Diego Surfers finished second in the pool with a differential of just 5 points less than the Lions. They smashed the Grey Wolves 50-0, but only narrowly won their first match over the Oregon Jesters 10-5. It seemed that Oregon, for the second year in a row, was unlucky to not make it to the Cup knockouts after two close matches against the top teams. They finished the pool with a 1-2 record after taking down Colorado 24-12 in the final match of pool play. 

Over in Pool B, another Midwest team cleaned up with a 3-0 record; last year’s Runners-up, Chicago North Shore. North Shore allowed only one try the entirety of pool play, from the HEB Hurricanes, who finished second. Their overall pool differential of +101 might seem painful, but it’s not the worst we’re going to cover. It was almost double the PD of the Chicago Lions though, which raised a few eyebrows heading into the Cup knockouts. Were we going to see the Midwest Champions knocked off by the runners-up for the second year in a row? The HEB Hurricanes went 2-1 to seal their first trip back to the Cup quarters since 2023 after they topped Berkeley 22-7 and Orlando 26-5. If you take out their 26-5 loss to North Shore, they had a pretty impressive differential as well, allowing only two tries. Berkeley and Orlando duked it out in the second round of pool play, with Orlando taking the win 22-10, dropping the All Blues down into the Bowl quarters, a far cry from their starting rank of 7th. 

Pool C was dominated by the Scion Sirens, who proved they are back to their winning ways, finishing with a total score of 163-5 in three matches. That’s a PD of +158, or an average of about 53 points per match. The lone team to score a try against them? The Chicago Lions Bonus Track, who were ranked 14th entering this year’s competition (told you not to count them out). The Lions cleaned up with a 31-5 win over Boston and a narrow 17-14 defeat of Phoenix to secure their own spot in the Cup quarterfinals and a top eight finish. Phoenix logged their lone win of the day in the first round of pool play when they defeated Boston 21-7. Those results meant that Phoenix and Boston would play one more match for the Bowl knockouts at the end of the day Saturday, while Scion and the Chicago Lions Bonus Track advanced to the Cup knockouts on Sunday.

Finally over in Pool D we had our first real “big upset” of the tournament. Fourth-ranked Life West were expected to dominate this pool, especially after winning the D2 XV National Championship just a few months ago. Eyebrows were raised when they dropped their opening match to the Dallas Harlequins 19-10. They did follow it up with a 31-5 over Philadelphia; everyone has seen a slow start before, it could mean anything. However when they lost 31-0 to WAC later in the pool rounds, it was guaranteed- Pool D’s top seed would not be advancing to the Cup quarterfinals. Instead, Washington Athletic took the top seed, going undefeated with a 34-7 win over the Harlequins and a 22-5 win over Philadelphia. The Quins took the second seed in the pool when they defeated Philadelphia 24-12 in the final round of Saturday’s pool play. Philadelphia finished at the bottom of the table while Life West took the second lowest seed, both to play in the Bowl quarterfinals at the end of the day.

With pool play out of the way, the top eight and bottom eight teams were assigned to their respective knockout stages. The bottom two teams in each pool would compete for the Bowl (9th), and if they lost the quarterfinals, the Shield (13th). Notable teams in the Bowl quarterfinals included Life West, who entered the competition ranked 4th overall; the Berkeley All Blues, who entered ranked 7th and finished 0-3 in pool play; and the ORSU Jesters, who took the spot of the Oregon Sharks who won the Bowl last year after going 2-1 and missing the Cup quarters due to tiebreakers. 

All four Bowl quarterfinals were played at the end of the day on Saturday, after the pool matches. The ORSU Jesters upped their record to 2-2 with a 27-5 defeat of Philadelphia in their quarterfinal. Philadelphia finished 11th last year, losing the Bowl semifinals to the Oregon Sharks. There’s just something about the Pacific Northwest that stumps Philadelphia, marking the second year in a row that Philly were knocked out of the playoffs due to Oregon. Life West bounced back from a tough start to Saturday with a narrow 17-12 defeat of the Colorado Gray Wolves. It was the closest match that Colorado had so far that weekend, after going 0-3 in pool play. It was also a welcome relief for Life West, who had entered the competition ranked 4th in the standings. Boston got their first win of the tournament with a 17-0 defeat of Orlando in their Bowl quarterfinal. It was a tough tournament for Boston who entered with a ranking of 6th overall, but with back to back wins on Sunday, they could finish in the single-digits, which is closer to their starting ranking than things looked coming out of pool play. The final Bowl quarterfinal saw last year’s Shield winners, Phoenix, absolutely dominate the Berkeley All Blues with a final score of 42-0. This win guaranteed Phoenix a higher ranking than last year, and continued the frustrations for the All Blues, who entered this year’s tournament ranked 7th.

The four winners advanced to the Bowl semifinals, while the four losers progressed to the Shield playoffs, competing for 13th place. The two Bowl semifinals were incredibly close, decided by five points or less. Life West continued their winning streak with a 21-19 defeat of ORSU on Sunday morning. In the other semi, Phoenix and Boston faced off for the second time this tournament, as they both came out of Pool C. Their first meeting saw Phoenix win comfortably, 21-7. This second meeting was much closer, with Boston scoring two tries to Phoenix’s three, for a final score of 17-12. In the end it was Phoenix advancing, but not by much. In the Bowl final, Phoenix took on Life West, both teams with a record of 3-2. Both sides managed to put points on the board, but Phoenix was too hot to handle, and soared to a 26-12 win, claiming the 2026 Bowl title. It was a rise in the rankings for Phoenix who finished last year at 13th and entered ranked 11th, but a pretty big drop for Life West who finished last year at 7th and entered this year at 4th. 

In the Shield playoffs, only one of the teams had won a match on Saturday: Orlando, who finished third in Pool B after defeating the Berkeley All Blues 22-10. Before the end of the day, more teams would get their first wins, as Philadelphia and Colorado faced off in the first Shield semifinal. It was an impressive performance from Philly who scored four tries to Colorado’s two, advancing to the Shield final by a final score of 24-10. Orlando got their second win of the tournament over Berkeley by a score of 31-7. As Orlando entered the tournament as the 15th seed, they were guaranteed a higher finish win or lose their final match of the day. In the Shield final against Philadelphia, they capped off their weekend with a big 20-5 win, cementing a 3-3 overall record, a higher ranking then they started, and some hardware to take back home to Florida. Philadelphia dropped from their entering rank of 12th to 14th, three spots below last year’s finish of 11th.  In the Wooden Spoon game, either Colorado or Berkeley would come away from the weekend with a win. It was a low-scoring affair, and despite being the only side to convert a try, Colorado just couldn’t keep up with the All Blues, who clinched 15th with a final score of 10-7. Now I mentioned it in the Men’s wrap-up, but I’ll say it again – this is 15th and 16th in the nation. These teams had to prove they are the best of the best just to get invited, so a 15th/16th place finish is nothing to scoff at. Someone’s gotta come bottom of the table, it’s the way it works. Colorado finished with the same ranking they entered at, and the same they finished last year; consistent. Berkeley fell far from their 4th place finish last year, and their 7th place entry this year, dropping eight spots to finish 15th.

Moving into the Cup knockouts, these four quarterfinals were all played on Sunday morning, with teams getting a good rest after three matches on Saturday. Surprise teams making it to the quarterfinals included both Texas sides, the Dallas Harlequins and HEB, who entered the competition ranked 13th and 10th, respectively. The Chicago Lions Bonus Track also surprised when they came into the tournament ranked 14th, managing to finish second in their pool behind Scion.

There were some pretty big scorelines in the Cup quarters, which makes sense given some of the massive point differentials we saw in the pool rounds. Four of the teams entered the quarters undefeated, Scion leading the way with a total PD of +158, followed by Chicago North Shore with a PD of +101, Washington Athletic with a PD of +75, and the defending National Champs, the Chicago Lions, with a PD of +55. However, it wouldn’t be a National Championship tournament without at least one upset. That came at the hands of the San Diego Surfers, who had finished second in Pool A, losing 15-10 to the Chicago Lions in pool play. The Surfers faced WAC in their Cup quarterfinal, a true West Coast battle of the titans. San Diego led until 12.5 minutes in, when lightning lit up the sky and postponed the last minute and a half of the match until after the storms passed. The drama lasted at least an hour as all teams were herded inside to wait out the rain. By the time San Diego and WAC took to the pitch again, the energy had faded, and WAC were unable to make up the deficit, San Diego advancing to the final four. Both the Chicago Lions and Chicago North Shore breezed through their quarters, though North Shore took on a feisty Lions Bonus Track, who had already backed up their last minute invitation to Nationals with a guaranteed top-eight finish. The Lions topped the Dallas Harlequins 22-5 white the Scion Sirens sailed past HEB by a score of 35-0, bringing their total PD over the tournament to +193 with only one try scored against them. 

We’ll follow the four Plate finalists before finishing off with the top four teams competing for the big hardware. Washington Athletic took out their frustrations in the Plate semifinal with a clinical execution of the Dallas Harlequins, final score 34-0; almost identical to their first meeting in pool play. The Chicago Lions Bonus track defeated the HEB Hurricanes by a score of 33-12, bringing their total record to 3-2, and putting them in the competition for 5th place. WAC successfully defended their Plate win from 2025, when they took down the Lions Bonus Track 29-5. It’s solid consistency from WAC who finished 5th last year, entered ranked 5th this year, and finished 5th again. The Lions Bonus Track got a massive boost in ranking, having entered the competition  at 14th, rising up to a final 6th place finish. Dallas and HEB battled it out for 7th and 8th in a classic Texas heavyweight brawl, with HEB claiming the crown by a final score of 24-12. Both teams finished far above their entering rank, and above their finishes from the year before, all of which were in the double digits. 

The top four women’s teams competed for the ultimate prize, the National Championship title, and all the hardware. Between the Scion Sirens, the Chicago Lions, and the San Diego Surfers, these teams had a combined 11 National titles of the 15 available. Despite the caliber of the top four teams, both semifinals were pretty solidly decided with time to spare. Both the Sirens and the Chicago Lions kept their undefeated streaks alive as they took down their opponents by a difference of four tries. Scion allowed one score by North Shore, final score 31-7, while the Lions blanked the Surfers, 24-0. In the end, it was the match-up that everyone could see coming from the first round of pool play. The defending Champions, the Chicago Lions, taking on the winningest women’s 7s club in the US, the Scion Sirens. The last time these two met was in last year’s semifinal, where Chicago came from behind to shock Scion 17-10. Before that, they met in the 2024 National Championship, with Scion winning that one 17-5. This year, it started off pretty well matched. Both teams were trying to find gaps in the defense, and each managed to have the upper hand at times, but as the minutes ticked on, Scion just looked too good. Chicago managed to score three tries in the back and forth, but Scion nailed the coffin shut by converting all five of their tries for a 31-19 final score. This win is Scion’s fifth National 7s title in just 10 years (2016, 2021, 2022, 2024, 2026), an incredible achievement for the club and a legacy that will be hard to top. The Lions finished second, making it four back to back National Championship appearances in a row (1st- 2023, 2025; 2nd- 2024, 2026), another epic legacy in USA Club rugby. In the bronze medal match Chicago North Shore managed to top the San Diego Surfers by a final score of 14-5, taking home their own hardware for the second year in a row. San Diego may have finished fourth, but raised their ranking quite impressively after finishing 8th last year, and entering 8th this year.