The USA have named their team for the Quadrangular tournament taking place in South Africa next July. The USA have named a fairly young team, selecting a number of the players who played in the Under 21 contest against the UK next year. In contrast they have only two members of the team who finished fourth in the World Cup two years ago. Just Dori Johnson and Seth Alcott are in this latest USA squad. Dori is joined in the Ladies section by Brianna True, Liz Cook and Steph Shuttles, while Seth has Derek Rumel, Houston Hutcherson and Sam Pohl for company. They have also named two reserves Sam Burrows and Caroline Gardiner.

Five of these players travelled to the UK in 2012 to take on the UK Under 21s. Brianna and Caroline were in the Ladies’ section, while Derek, Sam and Houston all played for the Men’s section. They lost the three test matches that took place but the results were very close and they undoubtedly took away a lot of experience from that experience. Dori Johnson was actually their coach for that test match series and so she will already know her new teams very well. The USA team shone at the World Cup and achieved their highest ever finish and a lot of that can be credited to Seth and Dori who were two of their star players. Now the USA looks to link up those stars with their up and coming young talent as they look to develop over the next two years into a team who can finish even higher in 2015.

The Quadrangular will take place in South Africa in July. It will feature teams from the USA, the UK, South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is a five day competition, taking place from the 10th to the 15th July, with teams gathering a week before to draw horses and work with them in the run up to the competition. (Editor’s note: We are currently trying to arrange finance to send our roving reporter to report on the action, strangely banks seem unwilling to lend money for this essential trip!)