by: Brian Barker<\/p>\n
The Toronto District School Board is welcoming a new sanctioned sport to its athletics fold.<\/p>\n
Voting members of Toronto\u2019s 86 public high schools officially approved rugby sevens in June.<\/p>\n
The results, 89 percent in favour, have pleased Don Mills Collegiate\u2019s Daniel Kunanec who has been championing on behalf of 1,091 student rugby players.<\/p>\n
But the process to present why rugby sevens as a viable sport was a meticulous one, Kunanec admits. \u201cI just wanted to get it right,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t that I was nervous, I just felt I had a responsibility to all the students who had already played in those tournaments and to the athletes, coaches and referees involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich was interesting because I felt like I started it all those years ago as sort of a lone wolf and it has grown so much.\u201d What added to his consternation was votes were cast through clickers instead of by hands for the first time. \u201cIt was interesting because this was the first year it wasn\u2019t a public vote,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you didn\u2019t know which way the people were voting, so it made it that more nerve-wracking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Along with Kunanec, Leaside\u2019s Alf Scharlach and Northern\u2019s Daniel Gana assisted. Kunanec noted they had rebuttals handy should they run into any conflict.<\/p>\n
\u201cDan Gana actually presented a counter argument before we needed it,\u201d Kunanec said, with a laugh. \u201cAnd a few people joked with us after that he really didn\u2019t even need to go there. \u201cThey let us know that maybe we lost a few votes because he was overzealous,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the passion was there, it was so good.\u201d With the inclusion of rugby sevens, it doesn\u2019t mean the TDSSAA Rugby Sevens Championship Series tournament is going the wayside. \u201cRugby sevens is tournament structure, so that will never change,\u201d Kunanec said. \u201cWhat we are able to do now though is to have more supporting tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also being proposed is a point system where teams entering the supporting tourneys will gain in rankings leading up to the championship series. \u201cWe\u2019re encouraging more play,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a very clear, obvious theory that the more you play the better you\u2019re going to be.\u201d With Toronto\u2019s board voting in favour, other regions are seeing their opportunity as well, including York, Peel and Durham.<\/p>\n
On the question of OFSAA\u2019s involvement, Kunanec explains Rugby Ontario already has a system in place, based off of Toronto\u2019s. \u201cThey now have a second tournament which is their championship tournament, so if you through your own region feeling that you have done things worthy of being in a championship tournament, you can then be invited in your provincial championship,\u201d he said. The advantage for Kunanec, being the coach of Ontario Junior Blues Sevens Mens program, is he has seen the national, provincial and city rugby program grow by rucks and rolls.<\/p>\n
In an international tournament held in Victoria, B.C., his team won gold. Those same players have the chance to represent Canada at the Youth Commonwealth games in Isle of Man this September. Rio in 2016 is not far off. Not to compete but to medal, Kunanec says. \u201cIt\u2019s not the end of something, it\u2019s not even the beginning,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s part of a structure that\u2019s there.\u201d It\u2019s a structure that he says has got the rest of the world talking. \u201cI think so often we kind of assume what (England, Australia and New Zealand) have done best and we\u2019re going to follow them,\u201d Kunanec said. \u201cBut it just so happens that we\u2019re currently world leaders at the junior level in rugby sevens. \u201cPeople are talking about it at high levels and we need to appreciate it and acknowledge it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by: Brian Barker The Toronto District School Board is welcoming a new sanctioned sport to its athletics fold. Voting members of Toronto\u2019s 86 public high schools officially approved rugby sevens in June. The results, 89 percent in favour, have pleased Don Mills Collegiate\u2019s Daniel Kunanec who has been championing on behalf of 1,091 student rugby […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":412,"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianrugbyfoundation.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}