{"id":26220,"date":"2020-03-19T19:46:42","date_gmt":"2020-03-19T23:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=26220"},"modified":"2020-03-19T19:46:51","modified_gmt":"2020-03-19T23:46:51","slug":"senior-women-barbarians-prepare-for-2020-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/senior-women-barbarians-prepare-for-2020-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior Women Barbarians prepare for 2020 season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Robert Belardi <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aurora Barbarians\u2019 Senior Women\u2019s rugby team is gearing\nup for the summer of 2020 after a third-place finish last season in the Ontario\nWomen\u2019s League (OWL). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team is prepared to welcome more players to the roster\nfor this year and the availability is open to anyone interested in playing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is anticipated that 24 will return and 15 more are\nexpected to join, according to head coach, Khalil Ajram. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five players on the roster went on to play with Team Ontario\nand one with the national team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Come this season, the expectations are high. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis year coming up, we\u2019re just working on getting the\nnumbers up, and, obviously improve on our third-place finish last year,\u201d\nexplained Ajram. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has been coaching with the Aurora Barbarians since 2010\nwith the Junior and Senior Men\u2019s teams. He has now been with the women\u2019s team\nfor the past two seasons and works outside of the club as the Program Lead with\nRugby Ontario 7\u2019s and Rugby Canada U18 boys 7\u2019s program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery team you coach and you work with is a different\nexperience. [That\u2019s] the beauty of rugby. You\u2019ll never get the exact same\nresults two times in a row.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That might be encouraging to hear for a team looking for a\ndifferent result. They can\u2019t possibly finish third this year, can they? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s optimistic surely, but the proposition is the\nmotivating factor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year, the senior women\u2019s team will welcome back the\ncaptain of the Canada Rugby League team Mackenzie Fane, former Canada 7\u2019s\nplayer Arielle Dubissette-Borrice, current Canada 15\u2019s player McKinley Hunt and\nformer Canada Aged-Grade player Dani Grant. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another player returning this year is 28-year-old Colleen\nBarbalindaro. The 11-year veteran with the Barbarians was sidelined for most of\nlast season with a leg injury and is excited to get back out there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Barbalindaro says the program has been spectacular. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great program. Our coaches are pretty high-level\ncoaches, so they\u2019ve both coached at an Ontario level.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of girls join the Barbs when they\u2019re in high school.\nThey have the opportunity to play U18 and U16 Ontario tournaments and can build\ntheir skills,\u201d Barbalindaro said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

She joined the Barbarians right after playing Rugby in high\nschool and has never looked back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are a few women who have played for Canada and British\nColumbia on the roster. But, when these women are not playing for Canada, they\nstill need to play for a home team and that\u2019s what the Barbarians are for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amidst this great opportunity is a challenge the club\ncontinuously faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Head Coach Ajram says the Barbarians face an off-field\nchallenge in the League that separates the Town of Aurora from the rest. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMost of the towns are university towns. So, they benefit\nfrom players who play for the university and stay in those towns,\u201d Ajram\nelaborated.  \u201c[We] don\u2019t benefit from that.\nThe issue we run into is retention of our players.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U18 Barbarians is one of the best teams in the province.\nOnce they head off to school, the roster can change and some of the players may\nor may not return. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hope is those players do return and remain a part of the\nrugby culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a culture Ajram says is unique, with players buying\neach other drinks after the game and teams being open to players of all ages.\nThe Men\u2019s Team, for instance, has a 55-year-old player on the roster, while the\nlocal club has helped found the Guardian Angels, a team solely dedicated to\nwomen over the age of 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this program, the women who enter it enter a sisterhood;\na place where their legacy is cemented within the team\u2019s history. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The girls are expected to begin practicing on April 28. No\nannouncement has been made regarding any changes to that schedule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information, head to the Aurora Barbarians website\nto learn how to register. <\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Robert Belardi The Aurora Barbarians\u2019 Senior Women\u2019s rugby team is gearing up for the summer of 2020 after a third-place finish last season in the Ontario Women\u2019s League (OWL). The team is prepared to welcome more players to the roster for this year and the availability is open to anyone interested in playing. It […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26205,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-sports","category-sports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/2020-03-19-04.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-6OU","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-26 00:14:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}