Caledon Cavaliers hosted rugby festival, took part in North 7s tournament 

By Robert Belardi 

It's been quite the inaugural season for the Caledon Cavaliers, to say the least. 

The Caledon Cavaliers rugby program featured a Minis Festival almost two weeks back that saw over 350 people attend and 176 cars parked in the lot in Palgrave Park. 

Five other minor league rugby clubs attended the festival.

This six-team tournament even shocked Councillors Jennifer Innis and Tony Rosa. 

“I think they were quite shocked with the scope. I know I've been correspondents with them for a few months now with regards to rugby because it's so new in Caledon,” said president Mike Iacovelli. 

“And that was only six clubs.” 

With the return of rugby for the first time in 15 years, Iacovelli, said he had a hope of having 75 players registered. Currently, there are 115 registered players, the club uses Palgrave Park and Humberview Secondary School to train and play and he said, this all would not be possible, thanks to the wonderful support from the Town of Caledon themselves. 

After having achieved such a feat, Iacovelli said that parents had told him there has never been this kind of engagement for rugby Town before. And when parents go to other festivals and they see the festival right here at home, they are completely thrilled. 

Coming off the weekend, Iacovelli began preparing his U14 boys and U18 girls for the Great North 7s tournament held at Fletchers Field in Markham. It was set to be the first major tournament of the year. 

In this round-robin style tournament, each team played one another once in the division. the club with the best record at the end of the day, won it all. 

Rugby 7's is a competitive game with seven players a side and with only seven minutes in a half.

The U14 Cavaliers took on the Aurora Barbarians in their first game of the day and suffered a 50-0 defeat. The boys then went on to lose 49-0 to Barrie, 46-5 to Southwest and 22-15 to the Barr Scottish. 

The U18 women's team, the Caledon Guardian Angels – who play under the Cavaliers umbrella – also had quite a tough outing. 

The Guardian Angels fell to the Misfits 39-0, 52-0 to NRU, 34-5 to Southwest and 24-10 to NRU.

Despite the results, Iacovelli was pleased with the effort on the field and says there is a lot of work to do for the Fall.