RUGBY ONTARIO ANNOUNCES 2015 KEY DATES FOR MEMBER CLUBS

The 2015 rugby season will commence with the Rugby Ontario Annual General Meeting on Apr. 26. This will be the first Rugby Ontario AGM held in the springtime period, since its shift from running annually each December. Details regarding the upcoming AGM will be released in the coming days.

Rugby Ontario’s senior leagues – the Marshall Premiership, Marshall Championship, and Ontario Women’s League – will kick off on May 9. Complete league schedules will be released in the coming days.

With the upcoming Pan Am Games coming to Toronto, the Rugby Sevens competitions will be held at Exhibition Stadium on July 11-12. This competition represents a great opportunity to cheer on Canada’s national sevens sides, which are likely to feature numerous Ontario-developed rugby stars, including international standouts like John Moonlight (Pickering, Ont.) and Ghislaine Landry (Toronto, Ont.). Tickets to the matches can be purchased at this link: http://www.ticketmaster.ca/artist/1515469?brand=to2015enca&lang=en- ca&ac_link=TO2015_landing_ballot

On July 25, Rugby Ontario will be running a soon-to-be-announced Ontario club sevens competition. Details regarding this competition will be released in the coming weeks.

OWL league play wraps up on July 18, with the OWL Cup, OWL 2 Cup and Women’s Intermediate Cup competitions commencing Aug. 8. The women’s competition champions will be crowned on Aug. 29.

The OWL Sevens competition kicks off on Sept. 5, with the final to be held on Oct. 17.

Marshall Premiership and Championship league play ends on Sept. 19, with the McCormick Cup and Gee Gage Cup competitions kicking off the following week. The Men’s Intermediate Cup starts one week later, on Oct. 3. The men’s competition champions will be determined on Oct. 24.

The Rugby Ontario Minor Festival will be held on Aug. 23. The U8, U10, and U12 festival is one of the rugby season’s major highlights; last year, more than 90 teams and 900 young rugby players participated in the event, with numbers expected to rise this summer. The following week, Ontario’s U14, U16, and U18 junior club teams will vie for provincial championships on Rugby Ontario Junior Provincial Cup Day. The location of these two events will be confirmed in the coming weeks.

Details regarding our high performance programs, including dates and locations of tryouts and major competitions, will be confirmed as information becomes available.

Rugby Ontario is looking forward to another fantastic season of rugby, as the organization continues to strive towards sustained and solid growth of the sport across the province.