Rookie Rugby Festival 2 of 3

Last Thursday, August 11th, TIRF hosted its second of three festivals at the Sunnybrook Park rugby fields. With the first festival successfully completed, this festival continued the same energy and fun for both the TIRF interns and the campers. The Sunnybrook Park festival would see the likes of Bill Di Nardo, Co-founder of TIRF, and the MP of Don Valley, Robert Oliphant in attendance.

It’s one thing to host a festival for 300 kids, but it’s another to be expecting 600 to arrive on one of the hottest days of the year. That’s what was expected at this second festival and right away it was all hands on deck. More pizza, more water, more of everything was required to assure a smooth sailing festival for the massive amount of campers. Festival leaders Caitlin Gag and Ahmad Hassan were constantly running around, directing, and assisting many of the activities throughout the duration of the day. With help from the rest of the interns and senior staff, the festival ran smoothly.

The campers had the opportunity to improve their rugby skills in games such as ultimate rugby and flag rugby, as well as have some fun running through obstacle courses and grabbing flags in flag tag. The kids were divided into separate fields by two age groups, six-to-nine years and 10-12-year-olds. Each group was allotted 40 minutes for lunch where they were able to enjoy free pizza and water/juice under the nice shade.

It was clear to see that this festival was another success and continues to raise the bar for our final festival taking place on August 17th. Big congratulations to everyone who participated. Thank you to the TIRF staff and interns and particularly the DVP region for putting together an impressive show. If you haven’t checked out our Facebook page take a look at the highlight of our day, the Cha-Cha slide featuring TIRF staff member Paul Myers!

We would again like to thank all those involved and our sponsors Playing for Keeps and to our supporters Pizza Pizza, Metro, and Food Basics.