Despite having had a CRC event and two national championships, women’s college 7s in this country is still, maddeningly, in its infancy.

That might be because college coaches are reluctant to change, but is also because 7s is actually more difficult for women to be good at than 15s.

Why do I say this?

While 15s rugby requires teamwork, tenacity, and bravery, something women college rugby players have in spades, the teamwork aspect helps you. You can bond, and bind on, with your teammates to accomplish a task.

In 7s, you’re more alone. You have to win rucks by yourself, or with only one partner. You have to be able to pass a ball, accurately, and on the run, for at least three meters. You have to be able to pass effectively with both hands.

If you offload out of contact, you have to be strong in your core and legs, and must be able to stabilize your body long enough to make a good pass.

You have to be fast enough to win the race to the corner.

So instead of seeing attacking rugby where players catch the ball on the gallop, and can feed their fasted players close to the sideline where she can out-pace her defense, we see slow, loopy passes to a player in midfield, who catches the ball flat-footed and then had to try to run around a defense that saw it all coming.

Even Navy, which made the final, found themselves when unsure reverting to safe, loopy passes to the woman, not for the woman, and as a result they squandered several scoring opportunities.

That was the struggle for teams at this past weekend’s Women’s College 7s Championships. Most teams were not running onto the ball consistently. Most teams did not have ten, or event seven, players who can make good open-field tackles, bounce to their feet, poach a ball, and make a good pass on a line to a support runner three meters away.

So the teams that could blew the others away.

But, again, this is a work in progress. The fact that the standard wasn’t astounding isn’t a tragedy, it’s a starting point. We are not there yet as a women’s 7s rugby nation, but as the competition grows, we will get better.

In my observations at College Station, I saw six teams that were playing good 7s: Norwich, Navy, Princeton, Texas, Cal, and Oregon State.

Some others, such as James Madison, Ohio State, Colorado and Stanford could be quite good with a little more practice.

The rest are a function of women’s 7s in American colleges, where in general 7s is not really taken seriously, not a priority, and not being coached the right way.

But the step has been taken to have a championship. Now it’s time for the coaches to get some help, and step up, too.

College 7s Championships team rundown: