USA's Mile Pulu (IRB/Zoomfiji photo)

The USA has finished up winning the Shield final at the NZI Wellington Sevens in New Zealand, but at the end of the day the squad will be ruing the chances they let slip away.

Early on Day Two, Al Caravelli’s side was bundled out of the Bowl rounds by France and hence missed out on an opportunity to improve its ranking in the IRB Sevens World Series.

The French, who’d been unimpressive in the earlier rounds, won handily 21-10 in the Bowl quarterfinals consigning the US to the Shield rounds.

The USA’s points came from tries by Shalom Suniula and Nese Malifa.

The loss, America’s third at this tournament, relegated the team to the Shield semifinals against Scotland, who had inexplicably lost to minnows Niue in the Bowl quarters.

The team rebounded from the earlier disappointment to register a 19-12 victory over the Scots.

Malifa, with two tries and a couple of conversions, plus a Nick Edwards try against two Scottish scores got the USA into the Shield final against Tonga.

The US had downed the Tongans in the pool rounds, so they went into the rematch full of confidence for a repeat performance.

And that’s exactly how things turned out with the Americans staging a 17-14 win.

(IRB/Zoomfiji photo)

Tries by Matt Hawkins, Edwards and Paul Emerick, along with a Nese Malifa conversion, was too much for Tonga, which scored two tries in reply.

The USA wound up with a 3-3 record in Wellington and while the finale may have been somewhat of a morale booster, the fact of the matter is that winning the Shield yields no points in terms of the Series’ overall standings.

And given that Coach Caravelli’s stated goal is to make the Cup quarterfinals in every tournament, the team fell way short of the mark in New Zealand.

Indeed, it hasn’t come close in the first three legs of this year’s Series.

With the USA Sevens the next stop on the circuit, the US will be under a ton of pressure to get results in front of its home crowd in Las Vegas.