A Review of 2025 from January to March: U18, MLR, BC Rugby Season, Men’s and Women’s 7s, U20, High School, University, Pacific Pride, Editorials
We posted over 300 articles last year and we’ll go through some of the key ones from January to March. We’ve highlighted 21 articles that give a quick overview of the first quarter of the season, starting with U18, to MLR, BC Rugby season, men’s and women’s 7s, U20, high school, university, Pacific Pride, guest posts and Rugby Canada shenanigans at the admin level.
JANUARY
We started with a review of the U18 program, Rugby Canada have recently reduced their footprint at this age grade, it was common to see the Canada U18 tour to the USA to play the the USA U18 team over the xmas break and into early January. The last one may have been 2020 and we reviewed the 2020 U18 tour. The Dog River Howlers have informally taken over the gap left by Rugby Canada with a U18 tour to Germany last year and one planned for Argentina in 2026. Let’s hope Rugby Canada can co-ordinate with the Howlers to make the tour as impactful as possible.
The MLR preseason kicked off, remember MLR, when Canadians were considered non-imports and the league was flourishing? The Fijian Drua came to play the LA team in a high profile preseason match. The Seattle Seawolves were supposed to play a Canada Selects side but that fell through.
The BC Rugby season restarted January 25th, except for the Premier which would starting in February. This year it’s starting a week earlier with the Premier restarting on January 24th.
The SVNS season continued with the first tournament of 2025 in Perth Australia. The Canadian women finished 4th, they had players like Olivia Apps, Asia Hogan Rochester, who are playing XVs now in the PWR. Also Piper Logan and Florence Symonds were in the roster, currently missing from the fall season due to injury.
The CanWest women’s 7s series kicked off in January in Edmonton under the dome. UBC won the first tournament featuring players like Adia Pye, Skye Farish and Shayla Valenzuela.
We got a look at the new players who would be coming into the Pacific Pride program and those who would be leaving for MLR contracts.
We got our first look at the Vancouver 7s schedule which included the men’s exhibition tournament. It was a 3 day tournament, this year it’s a 2 day tournament, will that leave room for the men?
FEBRUARY
A great article from Monty Weatherall “Opinion: The BC Premier League Has a Crucial Role to Play in the Path to Sustainable Growth”. It’s worth a read and some great points such as, ” Improving the standard of the club game in the BC Premiership is not an ‘instead of’ policy and more of an ‘as well as’ the good work that others are putting in. Improving the pathways offered by clubs in BC allows holistic year-round opportunities for players to develop, building high performance rugby into their lifestyle and complimenting their ambitions in employment or education.”
Rugby Canada announced Stephen Aboud is leaving “in order to be closer to his family” when we all knew he took a job back in Italy. What a colossal waste of time and effort in getting Rugby Canada’s high performance strategy on track, now we find out the high performance consultant Rugby Canada were paying as well is the new High Performance Director.
MLR Round 1 kicks off with 21 Canadians in action out of 46 on team rosters. 2026 will look a lot different now that Canadians are categorized as imports.
The VSI, Vancouver Sevens Invitational, kicked off at UBC leading up to the Vancouver Sevens on the weekend. It was a U16 and U18 regional tournament for BC teams with a few Alberta teams added. We haven’t seen the details yet for 2026 but believe there will be a couple of BC teams competing against other provincial sides. The BCRU announcement should come out in January.
The Vancouver 7s took place in February, the women finished 7th, the men played in a 3 team exhibition series. Now with 2026 only a 2 day event it will be interesting to see what the men do, a lot depends on whether they finish top 2 in SVNS 3 and advance to SVNS 2.
Canada men’s U20 held a camp at St. George’s in February while the Vancouver 7s was taking place. The camp would be part of the selection process for the U20 trip to Fiji.
MARCH
The men were in the three tournament Challenger Series trying to claim a top 4 spot to make it to the promotion/relegation LA tournament. They finished second in the first tournament which met the pre-tournament goals. Sean White was still coach of the team.
The high school preseason started and Phil Smith started his Island In Touch newsletter. Hopefully Phil or someone else will continue reporting high school rugby news in 2026.
The second Challenger 7s series tournament took place and Canada men finished 3rd this time, still in the running for LA qualification.
The BCRU announced changes to the PRC to make it a higher level tournament, only 4 regions would compete this year and there would a lower level competition for those who didn’t make the PRC team.
The second CanWest women’s 7s tournament took place, this time in Langley, and again UBC won the tournament.
Rugby Canada announced Edmonton would host the Belgium and Spain matches in July.
Canada women finished 3rd at the Hong Kong 7s and were 4th in the series. Scoring in their win over France were Shalaya Valenzuela (1T), Olivia Apps (1T, 2C), Sabrina Poulin (1T), Taylor Perry (1C), players that aren’t available to the 7s team so far this season, most playing XVs. We’ll soon find out which players are available for the first tournament in Singapore at the end of January.
The end of March saw the BC league standings giving a good indication which teams would be contesting for titles in May. Ravens were top of the table in Premier with UBC close behind. The Pride were a lot stronger in the 2024/25 season than the current season where they haven’t won a match yet. We’ll see if they can pick it up with new recruits in January.
Tomorrow we’ll look at April, May and June highlights.