Marcus Tupuola: rugby and rap straight outta Carson

“It was a typical Polynesian house,” says Marcus Tupuola of the home where he grew up in Carson, Los Angeles County. “There were a lot of cousins around, who were more like brothers and sisters. I grew up the eldest of about 10 kids in the one house – it was busy!”

Born in American Samoa, Tupuola’s mother brought him to California when he was a few months old, to a small city on the edge of the Los Angeles’ sprawl, with a strong Samoan and sporting culture, and to a household defined by family and constant activity.

The HSBC SVNS World Championship in Los Angeles this weekend will take place at Carson’s Dignity Health Sports Park, and speaking to me ahead of the event Tupuola remembers his first visit to the ground when he was seven years old. 

He was there with his family to watch the USA Sevens team play – he was riveted, immediately hooked. His first game as a player came a few years later: “I didn’t play my first real game until I was about 12. It was for a local Carson team, the Southbay Spartans. One game was all I needed, and I never looked back.”

Last summer, the Tupuola family again watched Rugby Sevens together – but this time at Stade de France in Paris, where their eldest son Marcus was no longer in the stands, but on the pitch fulfilling an Olympic dream. Being an Olympian is something most athletes dream of in the half-light of sleep, but a reality few ever touch. Tupuola was overwhelmed by the honour. 

“I remember when I got the email that I made the [Olympic] squad. It was like a waterfall of joy, a waterfall of tears. I cried. I needed a moment. I was with my girlfriend and I was like, ‘I’m so sorry I need 10 minutes to myself’. It was just – you know. All the years I had worked so hard to get to that point.”

Tupuola has an unexpected way with words, mixing street-smart straightforwardness with poetic openness, waterfalls of tears and joy. It’s arresting – and after talking with Tupuola for a while I’m not surprised to learn that when not playing rugby he is a rapper, his lyricism expressing itself in two albums so far, both on Spotify. 

His love of Rugby Sevens finds its way into his music – as a rapper, Tupuola is known as IVER; he took the name of a sporting hero, legendary Fijian ‘king’ of Rugby Sevens Waisale Serevi, and flipped Serevi to help create the moniker for himself. A homage to the greatest of them all, a promise to himself to emulate a sporting idol – and evidence, if any were needed, of how deep and wide his commitment to the game goes, and to all these years of “working so hard”. 

Tupuola’s nickname in the squad, Coos, was a happy accident — a misheard “Marcoos” by the lunch lady at the team cafeteria. In rugby, humour and quirk bind tighter than duct tape, and so his teammates pounced on the error and made it stick.

Coos, IVER, Marcus Tupuola (take your pick) now has his sights set on writing his greatest rugby lyrics of all. With luck they will conclude at the 2028 LA Olympics, held at the same stadium in Carson where Tupuola witnessed for the first time, as a wide-eyed child, the game being played. It is the stadium he passed almost daily growing up, round the corner from his family house. 

The importance of family and home are personally and culturally ingrained. Representing his country as an Olympian, in Carson, cheered on by family and childhood friends, is a powerful motivator, and as one of the more experienced players on the US Sevens team, Tupuola has naturally stepped into a leadership role. 

“I used to be the cool guy – now I’m one of the older guys! I remember last year to this year. It’s suddenly totally different, because now I’m the second or third oldest on the team.”

With senior players like Perry Baker and Kevon Williams having left the programme after the Paris Olympics, the squad has undergone a marked transition. Along with Steve Tomasin, Lucas Lacamp and Aaron Cummings, Tupuola now finds himself a guide to his younger teammates. 

The USA Men’s Sevens may need such guidance this weekend: The number of elite core teams on the circuit is set to drop from 12 to eight next season. It’s impossible to gloss over the impact. 

“We wish they could have told us about the new format before the season started. But,” Tupola says, with clarity and determination, “we have to drop the ego. Our Sevens programme is hanging by a thread. This is about playing for our jobs – and we are ready for this.”

It’s this attitude – matter-of-factness, lack of self-indulgence, emotional honesty, grit – that’s taken an American Samoan kid from Carson to the Olympics, and to the biggest Sevens stadiums around the world. 

This weekend, as the HSBC SVNS World Championship kicks off in Los Angeles, the big, busy, close Tupuola family will not have to get on a plane, or even behind the wheel of a car, to see Marcus play. 

They can all stroll from their front doors to Dignity Health Sports Park, to watch their Olympian son take to the field. It is Marcus Tupuola’s home ground in every sense, and it is here, in three years, that this Carson boy hopes to make history. 

Marcus Tupuola Profile:

Born: October 5, 1995 (Age 29).

Clubs: Southbay Spartans; Belmont Shore RFC & San Diego Legion (MLR).

USA SVNS debut: 2019 in Las Vegas (Cup Final winner).

2024 Paris Olympics.

37 x SVNS tournaments; 37 Tries.