Sevens: Gains for youth in sevens contest

Bay of Plenty's Erika Hepi fends off a Waikato defender at the Provincial Age Group Sevens at Arataki Park on Saturday.

The latest event in the Bay of Plenty summer of sevens made an impressive debut at Arataki Park on Saturday.

The inaugural Provincial Age Group Sevens for under-19 athletes from Bay of Plenty, Auckland, Northland and Waikato was devised to fill a gap between secondary school and senior club and provincial events.

Bay of Plenty Rugby's operations manager Neil Alton came up with the idea and, with support from the Waikato union, the format was put together.

The Bay's best players were selected from last week's BOP Secondary Schools Sevens tournament where 50 teams entered from 15 schools. Paul Tietjens coached the boys' team on Saturday, with former Black Ferns star and Bay of Plenty senior women's sevens coach, Victoria Grant, in charge of the girls' team.

Bay of Plenty Rugby's player development manager, Kyle McLean, said there were multiple purposes behind holding an under-19 rep tournament.

"From the girls' side, a lot of the players will overlap into the women's team. The main objective was about experience and development and learning, but we know a lot of these girls will transition to the senior team," McLean said.

"For the boys it was about the next crop coming through, not for this year because of the physicality of the men's sevens. Hopefully over the next year or two we will see a few of them go forward. It is also a chance for us to get to know some of the boys better for next year's under-19 fifteen aside programme as well."

McLean expected the tournament would grow rapidly and the goal was for it to be played alongside the Bayleys National Sevens.

Bay of Plenty girls' coach Grant said the positive to come out of Saturday's tournament was getting a group of talented young women together that had committed to playing sevens. "We have got them together in training and getting them to run in some structured systems because all of them are the best players in their school teams, and when they all come together they like to play individually," Grant said.

"We will try and keep them together until Christmas and run them through other provincial competitions at Pasifica in Auckland on November 22 and another under-19 competition in Cambridge."

Auckland took out both the men's and women's competitions at Arataki. The summer of sevens continues with 10 hours of action at the Bay of Plenty Club Sevens to be held at Paengaroa on Saturday.