The Tribune

By RENALDO DORSETT

Sports Reporter

rdorsett@tribunemedia.net

TEAM Bahamas will look to continue the Bahamas Rugby Football Union’s momentum on the international stage when they compete in the first ever Rugby 7s qualification process for the Olympic Games.

The BRFU will field national 7-a-side teams, both male and female, to the North America Caribbean Rugby Association (NACRA) Sevens Championship in North Carolina June 13-14.

The tournament will serve as a qualifier for the 2016 Rio Olympics, when Rugby 7s will be contested for the first time.

For the first time in the history of Olympics, the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro will feature Rugby Sevens competition. The top finisher in each gender will automatically earn Olympic qualification.

Team Bahamas is currently undergoing training sessions 6:30pm every Tuesday and Thursday evening at the Winton Rugby Centre.

Participating countries include Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands and Canada, Cayman, Curacao, Guyana, Jamaica, Mexico, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks and Caicos and United States.

USA Rugby has selected North Carolina’s Triangle region (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, and Cary) as the site of the event.

The Triangle Sports Commission, together with the Town of Cary’s Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources department, will be hosting the event at WakeMed Soccer in Cary, North Carolina.

In their last international appearance, it was a winless finish for the Bahamas Rugby Sevens team as they faced the top programmes in the region in international competition.

Team Bahamas finished 0-4 in their inaugural appearance at the 2014 Serevi RugbyTown Sevens tournament, hosted in Glendale, Colorado, in August 2014.

The 2014 Serevi RugbyTown Sevens tournament was a proving ground for many potential national teams looking to break onto rugby’s big stage.

Prior to that tournament, the Bahamas last competed in Rugby 7s at the NACRA level in 2013.

After two days of competition against the top teams throughout the region, the Bahamas finished in eighth place at the 2013 NACRA Sevens Championships.

Hosted at the Truman Bodden National Stadium in the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas was one of 12 men’s teams competing at the event. They competed alongside Barbados, Turks and Caicos and the Maple Leafs RC out of Canada, the USA Falcons RC, Trinidad and Tobago, Cayman Islands, Curacao, Mexico, Jamaica, Bermuda and the British Virgin Islands.

Eight women teams participated in the tournament, including the Maple Leafs, Mexico, Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Bermuda and Curacao.

The NACRA Sevens presented an opportunity to qualify for three events. An increasingly popular version of the sport, Rugby 7s is a quicker variation of the traditional 15-a-side game.