This is the Pacific Pride playing roster for the fall of the 2025-26 season. There are 29 players listed including five U20 players. Some of the players may move on to MLR in the spring season and new players may come in for the spring part of the season. We’ve also listed the Pride schedule as of August 2025. The first match will be September 13th at UVic.
World Rugby has announced the upcoming SVNS series for 2025-26 and there are some significant changes. There will be 6 Series events and 3 World Championship events. The Series events will all be 2 days, including Vancouver, and will start with Dubai (29-30 November, 2025), Cape Town (6-7 December, 2025), Singapore (31 January-1 February, 2026), Australia (7-8 February, 2026), Vancouver (7-8 March, 2026), USA (14-15 March, 2026). The World Championship events start in April and are 3 day events, Hong Kong (17-19 April, 2026), Valladolid (29-31 May, 2026), Bordeaux (5-7 June, 2026).
The rugby season in BC started this Saturday with a university rivalry, UVic vs UBC. The UBC Thunderbirds are defending national title holders and go into the season as favourites as highlighted by the CanWest preseason coaches poll, listed below. Both teams have some marquee names Piper Logan from the national 7s team is UBC scrum half and Carissa Norsten playing fullback for UVic, also on the national 7s team, was World Rugby Rookie of the Year on the 7s circuit in 2023-24. This weekend it was UVic that prevailed and we have both UBC and UVic match reports posted below. Also check out Alfred_Rugby on Instagram for match photos.
Canada started slowly and finished with their foot off the pedal but had a strong 40 minutes between the first try at 16′ and their last try at 55′. It wasn’t a complete game for Canada with a lot of handling errors and they’ll need to focus on the details a little more as they have Scotland on the horizon and then likely a quarter-final match against Australia. Sophie de Goede was player of the match. Coach Rouet summed it up, “We know we have a job to do to refine our game, I am excited for next week because we want to play a good game of rugby.”
Canada missing their two pros from France, Tyler Ardron and Evan Olmstead, aren’t the same team, that is obvious after this match. Canada’s goal was to get a 4 try bonus point, regardless of win or loss, but they fell short and now have to wait for the USA v Japan result next weekend. A Japan win or a USA win without a bonus point will see Canada through to the PNC semis and a spot at the 2027 Rugby World Cup. A USA bonus point win will see Canada start over again, and have to go the long route to RWC qualification.
A few stories of interest as we wait for the men’s and women’s national team rosters to be announced on Thursday/Friday. As a reminder it’s Canada v Japan men at 1am PT on TSN and Canada v Wales women at 4am PT. Hopefully TSN will have both matches in their Games on Demand archive on Saturday.
A good initiative by the BCRU to send two youth teams to Ontario before school starts in September. The teams will play regional games and then play the full Ontario team in their last match. John Tait the BC Rugby Technical Director stated, “We hope this will become an annual series of games between Ontario and BC, and that Rugby Canada will recognize the value of programming for this age band.“.
Tuesday Results:
Bears U17 Girls 25-17 TRU/EORU
Bears U17 Boys 32-15 TRU/EORU
Thursday Results:
Bears U17 Girls 31-22 SWRU/NRU
Bears U17 Boys 36-12 SWRU/NRU
Julia Schell scored 6 tries over 22 minutes in the second half for a record breaking performance by the fullback. She led in points 30, metres made 116, successful offloads 4, line breaks 9. The forwards had put in the hard yards in the first 40 and the game was won by halftime, 24-0, with the first 3 tries by forwards de Goede, Boag and Crossley. Courtney O’Donnell, second row, was top tackler with 14. Canada had 65% of the territory and played the game in the right part of the park.
What a difference having Tyler Ardron and Evan Olmstead, the two pros playing in France, in the starting XV. Between the tries and the steals at the breakdowns and lineouts, they were massive in Canada’s performance. Also kudos to the new coach Stephen Meehan, who has created an environment where the pro players were motivated to suit up for Canada. It was a solid effort on both sides of the ball and Canada looked in control for most of the match and definitely in the second half where they outscored the USA 17-3.
The RugbyTown 7s tournament kicks off today and the live stream is here. There are at least 5 Canadians playing in the tournament. Ethan Hager is playing for the Ramblin Jesters, a team that has won the tournament in the past. Canada eligible scrum half Cameron Nordli-Kelemeti is also playing for the Jesters. The North American Lions have Luca Milne, Marshall Mather, Rob Frascione, and Jack Shaw playing for the them, and Tyler Leggatt who runs the Upright Rugby Academy is one of the coaches.