{"id":6580,"date":"2014-05-07T18:10:18","date_gmt":"2014-05-07T22:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=6580"},"modified":"2014-05-14T14:39:38","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T18:39:38","slug":"barbarians-gear-up-for-2014-season-urging-youth-to-try-rugby","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/barbarians-gear-up-for-2014-season-urging-youth-to-try-rugby\/","title":{"rendered":"Barbarians gear up for 2014 season, urging youth to “TRY” rugby"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Doner<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Aurora Barbarians held their second annual \u201cTry\u201d Rugby Day, inviting junior and minor players to come out and try the sport for free at St. Maximilian Kolbe CHS on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Kids of all ages came out with their parents and braved the chilly, drizzling spring weather to see firsthand what rugby has to offer.
\nBarbs past president John Reich said the club was thrilled with the turnout.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great to see the community supporting us and wonderful to see so many parents willing to bring their kids out to try something new,\u201d he said. \u201cOf the about 50 or so kids that were there, I\u2019d say about 30 of them were absolute newbies to the game, so that\u2019s wonderful to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Interactive games and sessions with coaches were set up for the youngsters and parents were given the opportunity to speak with coaches, trainers and veteran players. The club also served up lunch and had a booth with some swag and information.<\/p>\n

Sandy Townsend, director of junior men\u2019s rugby with the Barbs and one of the event organizers, said the event was created to give kids the opportunity to try out rugby, when they otherwise might not ever be exposed to it.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of the kids we had out today have never seen the game on TV, don\u2019t have parents who play it, and don\u2019t even have it at their school, so we\u2019re delighted that they find out about it somewhere. And I have to say that I was really impressed with the number of girls who were out today.\u201d<\/p>\n

Townsend explained that youth seem to be drawn to the sport because of it\u2019s physicality and the fact that it truly allows anybody to play and participate.<\/p>\n

For girls, Townsend said it\u2019s one of the rare contact sports where girls play by the same rules as the boys.<\/p>\n

The junior and minor seasons will start up at the end of May and run through to August. Registration is still open, so for more information, visit www.aurorabarbarians.com<\/p>\n


\nSenior men\u2019s and women\u2019s teams ready to take another run at championships<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 2014 season has been slow to start, but the senior men\u2019s and women\u2019s rugby teams are finally gearing up for the regular season.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s slow, but steady,\u201d said Reich of pre-season progress. \u201cThe senior men and women have been out through the month of April, but as you can imagine, we\u2019ve even had snow at least two nights in early April, so with no warmth and all it\u2019s been hard to get the players enthused. However, we\u2019re definitely excited to get things going again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The senior men finished last season in second place behind the Toronto Scottish and will be looking to improve. However, this season the club will feature plenty of new faces as many veteran players are moving on, opening some valuable spaces for some young homegrown talent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as far as both the men and the women are concerned, we\u2019re going to have a significant turnover in players,\u201d Reich said. \u201cLast year\u2019s senior men\u2019s team was kind of the last hurrah for a group of guys that have been in the first team lineup probably for the last eight or nine years, but we were fortunate enough to win the U18 championship, so I see seven or eight of those recently graduated juniors to step up into starting roles with the senior men. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can maintain that right balance of youth and enthusiasm, with a few of the veterans sticking around, and I know they will, I think we\u2019ll be competitive and with any luck, maybe top four.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the women, they\u2019ll have some more familiar faces, but are poised to once again be one of the teams to beat. The women have won the Ontario Women\u2019s League two years in a row.<\/p>\n

Both senior women\u2019s and men\u2019s teams will be kicking off their season this weekend.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Aurora Barbarians held their second annual \u201cTry\u201d Rugby Day, inviting junior and minor players to come out and try the sport for free at St. Maximilian Kolbe CHS on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6537,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_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}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/2014-05-08-15.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-1I8","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 08:44:05","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\/6580","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=6580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}