Benjamin P.

My coaching background is built on experience at nearly every level of the game, from developing high school athletes to coaching on the international stage. I am a two-time Olympian in rugby 7s and played in one Rugby World Cup. Since retiring I have stayed heavily involved in coaching.
My coaching background is built on experience at nearly every level of the game, from developing young athletes to coaching on the international stage. I am a two-time Olympian in rugby 7s and played in one Rugby World Cup. Since retiring from international rugby, I have stayed heavily involved in coaching, athlete development, and growing the game.

I have coached for eight years at the high school level, helping athletes build fundamentals, confidence, discipline, and competitive habits. I have also coached within the USA 7s pathway, including serving as Lead USA 7s Pathways Coach from 2022–2025 and most recently as a USA Women’s 7s Consultant Coach for the 2025–2026 season.

I typically work with middle school, high school, college, and aspiring elite athletes, but I enjoy coaching anyone who is willing to learn and work hard. My coaching style is positive, detailed, and athlete-centered. I focus on helping athletes understand what to do, why they are doing it, and how to enjoy the process. Whether an athlete is trying to make a team, improve speed and fitness, sharpen rugby skills, or gain confidence, I build sessions that are challenging, clear, and tailored to the individual.

My playing career was built around representing the United States on the international stage. I debuted for the USA Men’s Sevens team at the 2016 Wellington Sevens and went on to become a longtime member of the national team, competing across the World Rugby Sevens Series and earning recognition as one of the top forwards in the game.

I was selected for the 2016 U.S. Olympic Men’s Rugby Team in Rio, where I was the youngest player on the roster and started all five matches for Team USA. I later earned multiple HSBC World Rugby Sevens Series Dream Team selections, including honors at Hong Kong, Las Vegas, Hamilton, and Australia, as well as a 2018–2019 Season Dream Team selection.

One of the proudest moments of my career was captaining the USA Men’s Sevens team at the 2018 USA Sevens in Las Vegas, where we won the United States’ first-ever World Series tournament title on home soil. I also represented the USA Men’s 15s team, making my debut in 2019 and earning selection to the 2019 Rugby World Cup squad in Japan, where I appeared in three World Cup matches.

My international career taught me what high-performance environments demand: work rate, resilience, leadership, and attention to detail. Those are the same lessons I bring into coaching athletes today.

A typical 60-minute session is structured, progressive, and built around the athlete’s goals.

We start with a 10-minute warm-up focused on movement quality, mobility, sprint mechanics, footwork, and coordination. This helps me see how the athlete moves while also preparing them for the higher-speed work later in the session.

The next 10–15 minutes are spent on core rugby skill development. Depending on the athlete’s needs, this may include passing mechanics, catching, tackle technique, evasive footwork, support lines, defensive tracking, or breakdown fundamentals.

The middle portion of the session is usually 20–25 minutes of applied rugby work. This is where we connect the skill to real game situations. The breakdown is one of my specialties, so I spend a lot of time teaching athletes how to win that area of the game through body position, timing, decision-making, ball placement, jackal technique, cleanout technique, and understanding when to compete versus when to reload defensively.

We may also work on attacking a defender in space, making decisions in a 2-on-1, improving tackle entry, or executing support lines after a pass. I like drills that force athletes to think, react, and compete, not just run through cones.

The final 10–15 minutes usually includes speed, conditioning, or competitive finishing work. This may be acceleration work, change-of-direction drills, repeat-effort conditioning, contact-prep movements, or a rugby-specific challenge that ties the session together.

Throughout the session, I explain what we are doing, why it matters, and how it shows up in a game. My goal is for every athlete to leave with better technique, more confidence, and one or two clear takeaways they can keep working on.