Brazilian men’s and women’s squads named for Pan Am Games

The Confederação Brasileira de Rugby ( Brazilian Rugby Confederation or CBRu) has announced the lists of men’s and women’s players to travel to Toronto, Canada for the upcoming Pan American Games. Squads of twelve male and female players will take part in the largest poly-sporting event in the Americas and do so with an eye on returning home with medals.

Men’s captain and former professional rugby player in Italy, Fernando Portugal analyzed what lies ahead: “of our opponents, three are traditional forces and medal candidates, the USA, Canada and Argentina. After this we have our direct opponents, Uruguay and Chile. It will not be an easy competition, but there are chances that we can dream high and go far. Without doubt we are a very competitive team”.

“We have arrived at the Pan Am after an excellent preparation. In addition to the increased number of weekly training sessions, we played in a variety of high quality tournaments in the first semester of 2015”.

Men’s coach Andrés Romagnoli point out that: “we hope to show on the field our evolution and continue being a competitive team. We have high expectations of course but we are also and é claro, mas também somos cautious because the level of our opponents is high. We are training hard to improve what we did wrong on the stages of the World Circuit”.

Brazilian Men’s Rugby Sevens Squad
1 Fernando Portugal, Martin Schaefer, Juliano Fiori, Matheus Daniel, Lucas Duque, Moisés Duque, Lucas Muller, Lucas Drudi, Lucas Domingues, Matthew Gardner, Gustavo Albuquerque, André Silva

For the women the Pan American Games is to be an entirely different experience. Unlike in the men’s division the women’s will be debuting and Brazil is to be a genuinely strong contender to win medals.

Captain Paulinha Ishibaski declared: ” The Pan American Games will be like an introduction to the Olympics. Being part of the Brazilian team, seeing other athletes, getting to know other sporting codes. Without question it is going to involve tremendous energy”.

“We are going into this competition with the certainty that we can compete on an even playing field. There are no easy games, we have already played against all of these teams, and we know that everybody wants to bring home a medal. We are going to grab all the opportunities and give it our best in every second of play, because all the details make the difference”.

Women’s coach Chris Neill said “it is an honor and a privilege to participate in the first Rugby Sevens tournament in Pan history. We know that we are going to see some of the best teams in the world but, as Brazilians, we know that we are going to fight until the final whistle and always give it our very best”.

Brazilian Women’s Rugby Sevens Squad
Juliana Esteves, Bruna Lotufo, Beatriz Futuro, Edna Santini, Paula Harumi Ishibashi, Isadora Cerullo, Claudia Jaqueline Lopes Teles, Haline Leme Scatrut, Angélica Pereira Gev, Maira Bravo Behrendt, Raquel Cristina Kochhann, Mariana Barbosa Ramalho