Both the men’s and women’s University championship are on the horizon. The women are first with UBC hosting the championship between October 29th and November 2nd. They are defending champions but have been beaten twice by UVic in the CanWest conference. They currently sit in 5th place in the national rankings, UVic are ranked 3rd with Queen’s and Laval sitting at #1 and #2.
There’s no Premier this weekend as the Kamloops Youth 7s has the attention of the BCRU staff and BC referees. There are however two Coastal Cup matches, one which also counts towards qualification for the National University Championships being held in November. UVic, UBC and TWU play a home and away series with the top 2 teams representing BC at the University Championships. UBC have already won their first match against TWU and this will be UVic’s first qualifier match. The Pride are visiting TWU in the other Coastal Cup match.
Two blowouts this weekend with UBC crushing TWU 76-0 to start their Coastal Cup and men’s University Championship qualification on a strong note and the UVic women continue their unbeaten run in the women’s University Championship qualification with a 74-10 pummeling of the University of Calgary Dinos. The UBC game video is archived below, we’ll post photos of the UVic match later today. There’s also match reports posted below courtesy of Thunderbirds and Vikes media.
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.
The UBC Thunderbirds finished the final Women’s Rugby 7’s tournament of the year with a 5-0 record to go unbeaten over the 2025 season and win their third straight Canada West championship Saturday afternoon at Willoughby Stadium at the Langley Events Centre in Langley, B.C.
The three BC universities took the top 3 spots in the first tournament of the three tournament CanWest series. The big surprise was TWU edging UVic for second spot as they won the head to head 12-5. UBC were the dominant team in the tournament going undefeated. Adia Pye of UBC was the leading try scorer with 8 tries, scoring at least one try in each of UBC’s matches.
This is a rugby wrapup for the weekend of January 18th 2025. The BC Rugby leagues resume next weekend in most divisions except Premier which is February 1st. UBC toured down to Washington State for an exhibition match. The PWR, Premiership Women’s Rugby, in the UK wrapped up Round 14 with 16 Canadians in action. We have more details on those below. Coming up on the horizon is the Six Nations, and yes for members, we will putting them up for download, as we have since 2016. The Six Nations schedule is posted below.
I received a nice note from Ian Smith, one of the UVic Vikes rugby players who is also their fundraising lead. It’s about their Blood Drive initiative to support Canadian Blood Services while also supporting UVic sports through pledges. You can read the note below which has links to their pledge form and the Canadian Blood Services donor form. Last year over 60 student-athletes and friends donated blood and they reached 127 pledges, a number they hope to exceed this year.
This wasn’t an outcome anyone predicted. The first time a University outside of BC wins the national title and it’s an engineering school in Montreal, fairly unknown in the Canadian rugby world. ETS is on the rugby map now and they’re hosting the championship next year.
It was the first women’s rugby national title for a BC university and hence the first title for UBC. UVic are silver medalists for the second year in a row. After high scoring matches all week, the final was a defensive contest with only one try scored.