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Day one of the combined Bay of Plenty Secondary Schools and Baywide Club Sevens at Papamoa's Gordon Spratt Reserve today gave the All Blacks and Black Ferns Sevens teams a perfect opportunity to take a break from their training base at Blake Park and spend some time engaging with fans.

It's a chance they love to take, says All Black Sevens utility back Dylan Collier.

'Definitely, especially to get more fans and more people involved in the game of sevens, it's definitely beneficial for us.

'It's been a cool day, we're amongst the community and just having some fun with the kids.”

'We've recently centralised here and some of us aren't from here so just getting some time with all these kids is great,” says Black Fern Theresa Fitzpatrick.

'It's awesome to be able to do stuff like this and say hi to all the kids that we want to inspire.”

International sevens stars Joe Ravouvou, Dylan Collier, Terina Te Tamaki and Theresa Fitzpatrick at today's secondary schools sevens

It's not just about autographs, selfies and games with the kids, says Dylan. He's also taken the chance to check out some of the matches in the secondary schools championships, and he's impressed with what he's seen.

'Yeah actually, I've seen a couple of games and there's some good kids out there with a lot of talent, so it'll be good to get them keep coming through the grades.”

Both teams are back in World Rugby Sevens Series action in Dubai at the end of the month. Having already started their campaign strongly with a win in the USA Women's event in Colorado the Black Ferns can't wait to get back into it, and pushing on to take out the title, says Theresa.

'We hope so, the girls are looking pretty sharp and everyone's just ready to get back into the sevens season.”

The sevens action continues tomorrow with the secondary schools under 19 boys' and under 19 girls' grades, and the Baywide clubs competition.