UFV’s athletics program is expanding with the new addition of a women’s rugby sevens program.
The team started as a joint three-year pilot project between Canada West, B2Ten, and Rugby Canada. UFV is one of six participating institutions, including the University of Alberta, University of British Columbia, University of Calgary, University of Lethbridge, and University of Victoria.
As a club team, the sport will primarily be funded through fundraising and donations, most of which will be provided by B2Ten, an organization that funds Canadian athletes, who is also funding the league’s other teams as well.
“Basically, no one is paying for air travel between the three tournaments,” Steve Tuckwood, UFV’s director of athletics and campus recreation explained. “Additionally, they’re providing $2,500 to each of the teams for scholarships to give out to athletes.”
Jen Ross, former Canadian national team player, will be coaching the team.
“Jen and I had started talking about a women’s rugby opportunity before this came up,” Tuckwood said. “Once we had confirmation from B2Ten about funding and that the league was going to happen we went to the vice president and she took it to the president’s executive and said this is what we’re planning to do, and they were supportive on a few levels.”
For now, the team will play as a sevens team, a form of rugby that grew in popularity after its debut appearance in the recent Rio Olympics.
“Sevens has been around for a long time, but it’s just recently made its stride in popularity,” Ross said. “It’s not a new sport, it’s just grown in popularity and it’s more fan-friendly because the games are short and quick and more excitement happens in 15 minutes than maybe in a regular fifteens game.”
However, Ross has hopes that it won’t take long to develop the club to include fifteens as well.
“I hope that eventually we will develop into a fifteens program because that’s a CIS sport where they play September to November and then the sevens takes over in the early winter / spring,” she said. “All the schools but us have a fifteens program and a sevens program, but right now we’re just going to have to go with sevens until we can get ourselves established.”
“There is a fifteens league for women, but that’s a bigger investment in time and energy,” Tuckwood said. “At this point we’re going to start with sevens and see.”
The team’s roster hasn’t been announced, but Ross already has close to 20 players joining the team.
“Because I’m associated with the Abbotsford Rugby Club, I knew early on who the players were that were attending UFV,” she said. “But that’s not saying that we wouldn’t be interested in having girls come out that hadn’t tried it before … Everybody’s going to be welcome to be part of it so that we can start to build a program and the culture that we need.”
Tuckwood noted that the team is also a way to bring student athletes to UFV that would usually have to attend elsewhere to play the sport.
“I’m seeing more and more athletes coming from the Fraser Valley and staying in the Fraser Valley to play university sport,” he said. “This is an option for us to keep some of those. We have some good recruits that are going to come and play.”
Although the majority of players have already played for a club team, this will be the first opportunity for them to represent a university in the Fraser Valley.
“There’s something about when you get to represent an entity like that. You’re representing a whole bunch of other people that are your age,” Tuckwood said. “It’s not like it’s a city or a club team with a whole range of ages. When you represent your university, you’re really representing people from 18 to 25.”
The series doesn’t open until January 21 in Edmonton, but the team is already itching to start practicing.
“We’re just waiting for confirmation of field times and then we will be on the field and ready to go,” Ross said.
“I think they’re anxious,” Tuckwood said. “If I told them they could go out in an hour, I’m sure they’d be there. They’re ready to go.”
