Waisale Serevi, the Fiji sevens legend, says that the Ariel Re Sevens tournament is “the future of rugby in Bermuda” after working with the island’s players during last weekend’s event.

Bermuda’s Ariel Re All Stars teams reached the finals of the main and high school tournaments at the National Sports Centre’s North Field, which gave Serevi great hope for the sport at a local level.

“The future of rugby in Bermuda is in this tournament,” Serevi said. “Because two teams reached the finals playing against bigger and stronger players.

“A lot of these kids, I’ve seen them come through when they were younger, like four or five years ago, and seeing them again playing in this competition makes it a success and I thank the sponsors, Ariel Re, for staging this tournament.

“The standard [overall] was good. For a tournament like this, for teams who are coming closer to Bermuda, bringing in teams with their families, it’s good. But moving forward, [another reason] is to test our players, whether they can go to the next level. I believe we can. We have raw talent, skills and speed. But we need to get stronger, to get into the gym.”

Serevi also picked out a couple of local players who stood out.

“For the high school team I was really proud of Alex Doyling,” he said. “He’s strong, he’s just 16 and he was a very good player [on both days]. He showed that he is capable of going to the next level.

“I see Corey [Boyce] at the elite level. He did well despite not playing a lot of tournaments.”

Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania squad, who captured the Bowl title, detailed what they got out of coming to Bermuda last week on and off the field.

“It was a lot of fun,” Matt Caltabiano, a member of the Philadelphia-based Ivy League school’s rugby and sprint football team, told The Daily Pennsylvanian newspaper. “Right after practice we all went to Horseshoe Bay Beach and everyone took off their uniforms and jumped into the water. It was freezing but a lot of fun. We hung out a lot during the tournament and at night on Saturday we went out as a team.

“It was good to play against higher level competition, but team bonding-wise, it was definitely an awesome time.”