New Youth Rugby Season starting for kids in Mountain View, Los Altos, Sunnyvale and Cupertino

Fall is in full swing and winter is fast approaching. The bad news is that the days are getting shorter and cooler but the good news is that a new youth rugby season is just around the corner!

The AYRU Board of Directors has spend a lot of time during the Summer and Fall looking back at the highs and lows of the 2012-2013 season and has thought long and hard about improvements for the 2013-2014 season. As a consequence, we have a number of announcements about changes that we would like to bring to your attention.

Non-Contact Rugby

The big change this season is that we are switching the entire youth rugby program to "Non-contact" rugby as our number one focus. There are lots of reasons for this but in essence we have listened to the feedback from parents who love the game and its ethos, but feel that the majority of children are too young for the contact version of the game.

The AYRU board members believe we can still achieve our overall goal of helping kids fall in love with the game of rugby via the non-contact form(s) of the sport. We can still help kids learn useful athletic and life skills (teamwork, leadership) without the worry of potential of injury during while tackling.  

Age groups:

The other key change we have made is to the age groupings. Last season we used Under 8 (U8), U10, U12 and Middle School age groupings. This year, to try an make things more balanced we will divide the children into U7, U9, U11, U13 and U15 age groups. Since we are adopting non-contact rules – all age groups will be co-ed. Our recruitment targets are aggressive this season and we are seeking a minimum of 4-5 teams of 7 players per age group. We will need your help to spread the word and meet these targets.

Practice days

The other key change is that we have introduced more flexibility into the practice sessions. We have two training slots this year either on a Saturday between 2 and 4 p.m. at Sylvan Park or on Sunday between 2 and 4 p.m. at Landel’s School. The idea here is to give parents and coaches more flexibility to plan other weekend activities.

Membership of NCYRA and Game schedule

Another key difference is that we do not intend to schedule regular games against other teams in the Northern California Youth Rugby Association. Again we have listened to feedback from parents who do not want to travel long distances at the weekend and who would rather play in local fields. In addition, the NCYRA has made “contact rugby” at U10 and older compulsory. We do not agree with their stance on this key safety issue and have decided to take a more responsible approach to coaching youth rugby.

A Local rugby program

We intend to play all games locally (Mountain View and Sunnyvale) though would like to take the opportunity to travel to some of the clubs e.g. San Francisco Golden Gate at Treasure Island, who share our values and approach.

We are planning several extra-curricular activities for the kids this year to build camaraderie on and off the field.

The last big announcement is that our youth rugby organization became a tax exempt corporation over the Summer. This is crucial to our long term success as opens up lots of opportunities to seek additional sources of income, including tax-deductible donations, sponsorships and grants. The most immediate impact of our Not-for-profit status is that we have decided to become the most affordable youth rugby program on the Peninsula by reducing the registration fee to only $80 for any child in the winter program.

We hope these announcements will come as good news to our existing, past and future members. Please get in contact with any of the AYRU directors with any questions. Contact details for each of the directors are on the website www.ayru.net.

As with any non-profit, much of the work behind the scenes is carried out by a small group of volunteers. We always need more help even if it is just a few hours. Please get in contact if you think you could help with recruitment, coaching, game scheduling etc.

Attached is a pdf file of a flyer for this season; please distribute the flyer to friends, family, neighbors etc. to help us meet our recruitment goals and grow this exciting sports program. 

Paul Lynch – AYRU Co-founder, President, Director and Coach  

AYRU…………A Youth Rugby Program where safety and fun are number one.