Junior rugby in St. Albert is underway for the 2012 season. The men’s U17 and U19 teams have been on the fields since mid-June practicing Monday and Thursday evenings with games on Wednesday nights against teams from Edmonton and Red Deer. The combined U17 and U19 women’s team practices on Monday and Wednesday evenings.
On Saturday the St. Albert Rugby Football Club U17s will meet an international opponent – the Monmouth School U17s visiting from Wales. Kickoff is 11:30 a.m. at the SARFC. Another international fixture at home will go Monday, July 23 when the SARFC U18s take on the Audenshaw U18s from England. Kickoff is at 5:30 p.m.
The U15 and younger boys and girls teams have been practicing since the end of April and are getting set to wrap up their season at the end of the month with a final festival on July 28. Junior rugby administrative volunteer Juliette Bradley said, “this year registration is up enormously” with 180 players registered in the SARFC junior program.
University of Alberta researchers Don Voaklander and Andrew Harris studied hockey injuries among 8,000 atom, peewee and bantam hockey players (ages 9-13) in the Edmonton region, finding no evidence to support the notion that early exposure to contact in hockey helps players in the long run. The study, published in the Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine last month, included injury data from Edmonton-area emergency departments including the Sturgeon Community Hospital.
