Oakville Crusaders
School’s out, Summer’s in full swing and with the first long weekend behind us parents are scrambling to find ways to get their kids out of the house and into fun summer activities. Parents want their kids to experience the kind of outside all day, totally unplugged, fun and games, kind of summers they grew up with, and Oakville Crusaders have answered the call.
Since 2010 the Crusaders Rugby Club have been providing day-camps for local kids who are interested in learning the sport of rugby, and eventually the popularity of the camps led to the creation of camps for children as young as 4 years old.
"The Cru" as they are lovingly known around town are the largest rugby club in the country, and if you took the number of campers who participate in these camps and formed a second club it would make for the 4th largest club in the province.
Oakville News spoke to Crusaders Director of Rugby, Kevin Brenders who said “parents wanted to drop their kids off at a 27 acre park and just allow them with some supervision to run free, play sport and have some fun.”
From there they created the current summer programming, “it’s just like any other day camp, but they have to do a little bit of rugby, and we got such a reception that we went from 2 weeks to 4 weeks, to now where it’s an 8 week program.
Oakville Crusaders
Recently the Cru brought in Drew Warnock to take care of the Minis Camp and the programming is flourishing under her guidance, she breaks down the camps success in no uncertain terms, "We’re not exclusive to rugby players and ultimately it’s a very affordable camp compared to most things on the market."
Warnock goes on to add, "It’s full hours of the day, and we provide before and after care cheaper than all of our competitors, anyone can enter, it’s open to the public, there’s a skill level for everyone, and because we’re not only doing rugby for the whole day it’s easy to find an interest in the camp."
Club President Chris Tudor-Price was surprised with the number of kids who end up coming back for multiple weeks in the summer when they first began running the camps. He was expecting positive feedback but exclaims that it blows his mind how positive it has been.
"It’s not a full-time rugby camp, they do all kinds of fun activities, and interspersed into that is rugby. And, kids have a riot. They’re exceedingly active, they’re outdoors almost the whole of the time, which is good for most camps."
Drew boasts about the quality of the camps counsellors, and how well trained they are beyond just having had a criminal background check.
"All of our consellors have to go through “World Rugby Training” so it’s a standardized coaching,” but it doesn’t end there, “we have to go through concussion prep, we have to do all of our World Rugby reffing and coaching prep, there’s 5 courses you have to do."
A common fear for parents when you mention rugby is the fear of physical injury, but Ms. Warnock explains, "Your kids aren’t going into just hitting each other, its a step-by-step basic skill, the main thing we teach isn’t the violent part of rugby, it’s the respect aspect of rugby, and the teamwork aspect of rugby that is so unique to that sport."
For the Minis there is a new skill to focus on daily.
Mondays: Passing
Tuesdays: Kicking
Wednesdays: Tackling (with bags - campers don’t hit each other)
Thursdays: Rucking (with bags)
Friday: Games and races tying everything together.
While mornings have a focus on rugby skills, things get a little more relaxed in the afternoons according to Drew, "we always finish off with something light-hearted, so for example, we finish off with the slip and slide, or something, we break it up so there’s a progression throughout the week."
Oakville Crusaders
And that seems to be where the Crusaders Minis Camp has found their success, it is rugby focused in terms or the progression of learning.
But at the same time, Drew states "if you're an artsy kid we decorate jerseys at lunch, we have lots of craft activities to play, we do songs sometimes,” continuing “its very camp oriented as you would expect because it is for young kids, but it has a direction that is unique to our club because it does have a rugby direction."
Warnock believes that the Sports of all sorts Camps are successful for entirely different reasons though, "we have a lot of off-season hockey players, and that’s a huge population in our numbers as well because it’s the hockey off-season, so the multi-sport camp for example you have so many kids who are playing winter sports and it’s an overall athletic thing that isn’t offered."
The first day of camp is July 3, and Minis Camp runs for 8 weeks until August 25, It’s 5-day weeks, and starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m.
The Sports of all sorts runs for 7 weeks as there is a rugby leadership camp offered to the older kids in the 3rd week of August.
For more information on how you can register for either of these camps please click here.
