Bermuda's Under-21 women's hockey team returned to the Island this week after achieving an admirable tenth place finish in the Pan American Junior Championships in Puerto Rico.

Bermuda sent one of their youngest squads ever to this event ? the average age of the girls was just 16 years and seven months ? but their hard-fighting play over the 11-day event bodes well for the future of the sport at a national level.

Bermuda's final match last Saturday was a play-off for ninth and tenth places and the team were disappointed to lose 0-3 to Trinidad.

Technical director Dai Hermann-Smith said a crucial error early in the match led to a penalty corner for Trinidad which put the Bermudians on the wrong side of the scoreboard.

"This deflated the team who let in two more before the half," he said. "To the young side's credit, they composed themselves at the half and kept Trinidad at bay for the second half and were unlucky not to score in the last ten minutes when they gained several penalty corners."

Bermuda entered the tournament of 12 nations seeded tenth and held onto that spot, playing a total of seven matches against some of the toughest teams in the sport.

Winners of the tournament were favourites Argentina.

Bermuda posted a record of two wins and five losses, picking up wins against both Puerto Rico (3-0) and Dominican Republic (2-0).

They played in a tough pool which included second-place finishers USA (0-9) and Canada (0-8) but Hermann-Smith said the team never hung their heads even when the going got tough.

"Bermuda clearly have a group of young players who played with pride and passion, to their credit they always played to the end of each game and clearly never gave up. Indeed we never let a goal in during the last eight minutes of any of our games," he said.

"It is nice to see a team which is beaten 0-8 by Canada coming off the field pleased with their performance. The only games they were displeased with were the 2-0 win against Dominican Republic because they felt they should have scored more, and against Trinidad where they felt they had underachieved.

"Otherwise there was a great team spirit and many of the players cannot wait for the next tournament where they feel they will do so much better."

Also to the team's credit, few sides scored on them in open play.

"The defence only let in three open play goals in the entire tournament, 26 of the 29 goals against us came from penalty corners or penalty strokes," Hermann-Smith added.

"The young team did pretty much what was hoped for. We were very competitive against Barbados (0-2) and Trinidad, lost by less than double figures to the major nations and beat the teams we had to."

With such a young squad, the future could be much brighter.

"The most positive thing was the younger players, the 14, 15 and 16 year olds who significantly contributed in the defence, the attack but especially the midfield, where the entire group is available for the next Pan-Ams in 2008," said Hermann-Smith. "I am of the firm opinion that this team, plus a few of the other talented youngsters in the 12 and 13 age group, should continue to train together."

He hopes the Federation will send the team to another competition this summer to build on their Pan-Am experience.

Some members of this squad have been training together since 2002, he noted, and it showed.

The players also learned a lot from watching the big nations play and observing their skills, he added.

"The players now want to copy these skills and hopefully we will see some entirely new skills here in Bermuda," he said. "They learned that the current level of skill in Bermuda's leagues is simply not good enough if we wish to compete at a higher level. I think you will see them play more aggressively... They will also start to test our umpiring capabilities."