Dartmouth College stormed to victory at the maiden Ariel Re Bermuda Sevens tournament after winning the Men’s College Cup final 24-12 against Stony Brook University at the North Field at the weekend.

Jack Braun, the Dartmouth captain, played an inspirational role, scoring three tries during the final of the tournament which featured teams from nine colleges and universities from United States and Canada.

Also taking part were Yale and Kutztown, while three high schools, Greenwich High School, Stanstead College and West Chester Boys High School were among the other travelling teams.

Gavin Hickie, the Dartmouth coach, said his team had exceeded his expectations.

“I didn’t expect us to go the whole way,” he said. “We were looking at getting a few things right which we could build on for the rest of the season, so I was absolutely thrilled with the victory. Things clicked into place pretty quickly for us and I’m immensely proud of the players.”

Also tasting victory at the tournament were Boston RFC Collegians, who lifted the Men’s College Plate final, beating Notre Dame College 19-17, also on Saturday in front of a crowd of about 400 people.

Developing the Bermuda Sevens programme was high on the agenda while also exposing the island’s best young athletes to schools with scholarship opportunities.

Bermuda Sevens, coached by Tom Healy, also impressed by winning their third-place play-off match against Kutztown University of Pennsylvania 15-10 in sudden death.

Healy said the sevens tournament had been a “huge success” and believed next year’s event could feature twice as many teams. “It’s been a fantastic weekend and we’ve been ecstatic with the turnout,” said Healy, one of the event organisers.

“This is just the start of it. Next year will be twice as big with twice as many teams.”

Healy said the tournament was a step on the road to qualifying for the Hong Kong Sevens.

“Every time we play sevens it has to be off the island,” said the Bermuda player-coach. “We have to travel and all of our players have to fork out money to make the journey.

“Unfortunately some of our younger kids can’t afford to fund that and we ultimately started losing some of our young players who stopped making it into the senior side.

“We decided to bring a tournament here and that was really the route of it.”

Healy said he was impressed by the perfromances of Bermuda’s young players , many of whom caught the eye of the visiting coaches.

“The Bermuda youth have been fantastic,” he said.

“We put in two high school teams, both even as opposed to an A and a B side. They both did very well.

“I thought our senior side had a real impact, reaching the semi-finals before suffering a narrow defeat,” he said.

“I know some of the US coaches were talking about our players and it would be a real benefit for us if we could get a scholarship out of all this for some of our players.

“A lot of the guys made a good impression on the tournament, not just on the Bermuda team.

Healy’s side will be in action in August when they travel for Denver for the Serevi Rugbytown Sevens in preparation for the Caribbean Championships, which will be held in Trinidad in November.

“It’s a tournament [the Serevi Rugbytown Sevens] we have done well in, winning the Shield the last two years.” Healy added.

“If we can keep some of these younger guys and feed them through to the national team then this will have been a pure success.”