In 2011, Perry Baker achieved a lifelong dream. He’d made it to the NFL after being signed by the Philadelphia Eagles.
Flash forward two years, and the receiver, who had been on the verge of fame and riches, was sleeping in his truck and working as a pest control employee.
But now, another decade-long jump later, and the 38-year-old is gearing up for his third Olympics. No, not as an NFL player – flag football won’t make its return until 2028 – but rather as a two-time World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year.
Americans and rugby is an unfamiliar concept for most within the NFL-obsessed country but what they may not know is that the USA shares a history with the sport on the Olympic stage. Albeit, a long, far-off and extremely faint history.
The 2024 games in Paris marks the 100th anniversary of the last – and only – time the United States’ men won gold in Olympic rugby. A triumph which also happened to take place amid the backdrop of the French capital and against the hosts.

Perry Baker will be heading to his third Olympics with the USA men’s rugby sevens team
It’s a fact Baker laughs at when reminded of the supposed feat at the Team USA summit in New York.
‘I heard about this team,’ he chuckles. ‘I think there were only two teams.’
He’s not wrong. The Americans did only have to overcome two teams, France and Romania, to top the podium that year but despite stronger competition 100 years later, Baker favors the USA’s chances with the focus on medaling.
‘The first goal is to make it to the top eight and then the focus shifts to the podium for sure,’ Baker says. ‘Right now, I’m saying why are we putting pressure on ourselves? I’m just enjoying it all, taking it all in.’
The main reason for enjoying the moment? This will be Baker’s last. He confirmed that he intends to retire from professional rugby following the Olympic Games.
It’s the perfect send off. To finish a rollercoaster of a career on the Olympic stage – a career that at the lowest of his lows he never could have imagined he’d have.
After being drafted by the Eagles, the financial comfort he needed to fulfill his dream of taking care of his family and helping his parents retire finally seemed in reach. That is until a knee injury changed the trajectory of his life.
Baker was released from Philadelphia and endured two years in the indoor Arena Football League in a desperate attempt to cling on to any hope of making his way back to the NFL.

The 2024 games in Paris mark the 100th anniversary of USA’s gold in men’s rugby
Your browser does not support iframes.
He eventually made the decision to shift to an entirely new sport. That’s when rugby came calling.
In 2014, Baker was invited to the Residency Program at the Olympic Training Center and made his debut in the World Rugby Sevens Series under Head Coach Mike Friday. His performance in the 2014-15 campaign earned him a spot on World Rugby’s Rookie of the Year shortlist.
In the 2015-16 season, he led the Eagles in tries scored with 48, ranking second-most on the Series.
Yet, it still wasn’t all glamor and gold. He moved to Columbus, Ohio, where he lived between his truck and the rarely-available couch in the apartment that ‘probably 12’ of his teammates already lived in.
He once borrowed his mother’s $100 electricity fund at a tournament in Las Vegas, just so he could afford to eat.
After scraping by, Baker finally landed his big break. He checked every one of Team USA’s boxes as they began to put a team together for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro – rugby’s first appearance at the Games since their 1924 ‘upset’.
Baker admitted he bawled when he was offered a contract in the U.S. Olympic Training Facility, with the opportunity to represent the United States in Rio, while on-site at his pest control job.
From there the ‘Speestick’ took off.

Baker with USA teammates , Marcus Fasitupe Tupuola and Aaron Cummings (L-R)

Baker made the switch to rugby after a knee injury derailed his career in the NFL
Your browser does not support iframes.
Voted 2017’s World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year, Baker became USA’s All-Time Leading Try Scorer in the 2017-18 season.
He later helped the Eagles secure their first-ever Cup on home soil at the 2018 USA Sevens Tournament.
Baker earned his second-consecutive World Rugby Sevens Player of the Year Award in 2018 and helped his squad open the new season with a silver medal at Dubai Sevens 2018.
And he owes it all to the Olympic Games. Something he hopes will inspire a new generation of rugby stars in the US.
‘The Olympics play a major role,’ he insists when asked about the impact of the games on the sport’s popularity.
‘It’s what drove me to come play rugby. When I was told it was going to be in the 2016 games, I thought, “Oh man, I want to be an olympian.”
‘Getting a medal will definitely help, because everyone wants to be part of the winning culture. If we medal, the sky’s the limit.
‘We’ve been falling short for so long, everyone’s been like, “they’re a sleeping giant but they fell short.’ But if we medal, they can’t say anything.’
Yet, he acknowledges even a gold medal can’t single-handedly raise the profile of rugby in the States, not when it has to battle the existing popularity of football, basketball and baseball.

The 38-year-old became USA’s All-Time Leading Try Scorer in the 2017-18 season
‘Get them playing it at a young age,’ he says when asked how to grow the sport. ‘When I started playing football I was seven years old and I played it all the way until I was 23. Right now, my son plays baseball, he began when he was two or three years old. My other son was the same. There’s constantly balls and bats flying around our house but there’s no rugby ball. If I told you to go to Dicks Sporting Goods and find me a rugby ball, you’d never find one.
‘That’s the thing, we need to start at grassroots age so we can begin developing these kids who want to go play and be an Olympic athlete. That’s the key to building it.’
It’s the main motivation behind his post-retirement plans. Baker intends to start his own league called RugbyFlag X, traveling to different states and cities to introduce rugby across America.
But first, the goal is a podium in Paris, where Baker and his teammates will seek revenge against Team GB.
In Tokyo, the USA snatched an early lead in the quarter-finals but eventually succumbed to Great Britain 26-21.
“It’s so crazy, not having fans in [Tokyo] because we blew [that] lead,” he told Olympics.com
“I just feel like [if] we had fans there to have them behind us, we would have finished that one. It means everything and I like to soak it in…I just feel like it definitely is a push having those fans there,” he said.
However, one British rugby union star has made the reverse transformation to Baker. Louis Rees-Zammit, the Welsh international, shocked the rugby world when he quit the sport to pursue a career in the NFL and embarked on the International Player Pathway in January .
The 23-year-old held contract meetings with several teams before eventually heading up to Kansas City to sign a reported $884,000 contract with the Super Bowl winners.

Former Welsh rugby international Louis Rees-Zammit is making the opposite swap
But Baker warned Rees-Zammit faces a tougher journey to the NFL than his own path to rugby.
‘It’s easier to go from football to rugby than it is the other way,’ he claims. ‘The reason why is the playbooks. It’s the encyclopedia of the NFL. Rugby is really small. I just think it’s a lot for him to get – what audibles are being called, what you’re supposed to do, where you’re supposed to be, how to read defenses on the fly. Everybody in rugby is the “quarterback” whereas in the NFL there’s only one.
‘As a running back, he has a tough job. He has to know, if they call out a pass, which way he needs to run for that or he needs to know when he needs to block. It’s quick.
‘He has the size and the skills but it comes down to the knowledge. It’s so hard when it comes to the NFL to learn. It doesn’t wait for you, it’s constantly going and it’s hard to catch up at that level.’
While Rees-Zammit swapped Wales for St. Joseph to prepare for life with the Chiefs, Baker has headed to Paris and the Olympics for one last time.
Source link