Matai Leuta
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| Born | July 20, 1990 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Home town | Marina, California, U.S. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 6 ft 3 in (191 cm) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 235 lb (107 kg) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Rugby union career | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Matai Leuta (/məˈtaɪ liˈuːtə/ mə-TY lee-OO-tə; born July 20, 1990)[1] is an American rugby union player who currently plays for the San Diego Legion in Major League Rugby (MLR). Matai has gained international honors playing for the United States National Rugby Sevens Team.
Matai has had an extensive rugby sevens career, playing in 215 HSBC World Sevens Series matches in 44 tournaments, and scoring 31 tries. He played in the Rugby World Cup Sevens in 2018 in San Francisco and was on Team USA for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
He also played for the Houston Sabercats in 2022 and for the Chicago Hounds in 2023.
Leuta has played professional rugby with Premier Rugby Sevens (PR7s) since 2021. He was a member of the 2021 New York Locals but has played the last two seasons with the SoCal Loggerheads.[2]
Matai is from Marina, California, and spent much of his childhood in Fiji. When he returned to California as a teenager, he attended Seaside High School, graduating in 2008. While he played rugby as a youth, his senior year in high school he helped the Seaside Spartans win the Monterey Bay League in football.
Matai played for the Monterey Beachdogs when he attended Monterey Peninsula College, and later with the San Jose Seahawks. Leuta became serious in 2013 about pursuing rugby professionally, and improved his diet and fitness.[3]
Leuta was discovered in early 2015 at a recruitment camp at the Olympic Training Center in San Diego, California.[4][5]
International rugby career
Leuta joined the U.S. national rugby sevens team in 2015.[6]
Leuta scored his first World Series try at the 2015 Japan Sevens against Portugal when he caught the ball from the U.S. own kickoff and broke through two tacklers to score.[7] Leuta was a member of the U.S. team at the 2015 London Sevens, where the U.S. secured its first ever tournament victory in the World Rugby Sevens Series; Leuta was a starter for the final of that tournament, helping the U.S. defeat Australia 45–22 to win the tournament.
He competed for the United States at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.[8][9]
