Newcastle rugby sevens player Peta Salter hailed her side's improved showing after they finished fourth in the latest round of the national university series held in Charlestown at the weekend.
The University of Newcastle women's side won three straight games on day one of the tournament at St John Oval to enter Sunday as one of two undefeated teams.
Victories over Canberra (26-7), Sydney (14-7) and Adelaide (19-14) put the team in a decent position to make the top play-off match.
And while they started Sunday with a 10-all draw against Melbourne, Newcastle lost 10-0 to the Gold Coast's Bond University and were then hammered 29-5 by Western Australia.
They faced Western Australia again in the third versus fourth play-off match shortly after, but were again outclassed 17-0.
Reigning champions Bond University went unbeaten to claim their second consecutive tournament win.
Newcastle's fourth-place finish was an improvement on running sixth at the opening tournament in Adelaide last weekend.
"Bond hasn't lost a game and we kept them to the smallest score they've got across the two weekends," Salter said.
"They only beat us 10-0 and that's the closest margin they've had with any team.
"Melbourne who we drew with ended up coming second, so it's not too bad."
Salter felt Newcastle improved across the board.
"We had a few more people in [the side] that we didn't have last week and we changed up our attacking structure," she said. "Everyone felt a lot more comfortable out there. We were a little bit panicked last week as I think some of our game plan wasn't super clear.
"But we changed it up and everyone felt really confident in it. We played heaps, heaps better and were gelling a bit better in defence too."
Georgia Page finished the weekend in a moon boot after injuring her ankle but Salter said the extent of the injury was not yet known.
Knights NRLW player Jess Gentle was a standout.
"She's great defensively and scores so many amazing individual tries," Salter said.
The series heads to Canberra for the third and final tournament in a fortnight.
