OCR RECSport

Mission

The Ontario Collegiate Recreation (OCR) is dedicated to providing opportunities for student participation through quality campus recreation programs and services. This committee creates an environment, which enhances the students’ educational experience through their involvement in recreational sports and active living.

Extramural recreational sports include programs and activities in which teams represent their campus to compete against other college campuses for either an individual event championship or an overall extramural sport championship, most often in sports/activities not offered at the varsity level. As such, they are an extension of a member institution's campus recreation programming, often filling the gap between varsity athletics and intramural sports and provide additional opportunities for many higher skilled athletes to compete.

Since its inception in 1992, Ontario Collegiate Recreation (formerly the Ontario Colleges Committee on Campus Recreation) has overseen sanctioning and administration of and extramurals was not in place; that recreational play as a base needs to be the key to enabling Challenge Cups to return; and that OCR extramurals need more emphasis on the fun and recreational aspects of its tournaments to balance out the naturally competitive nature of any games that occur between players and teams from different college campuses. It was decided that instead of just focusing on recommendations for Challenge Cup renewal, it would be better to develop a comprehensive OCR extramural model that identifies different opportunities for fun, recreational play and also acknowledges the competitive element that is a significant part of extramurals. As a result, OCR RECSport was developed as the model.

In 2009, a designation of Campus Challenge SeriesSports was created within extramurals to provide a more formal structure of play for some of the more competitive and popular extramural sports, with each of those sports having tournament results count towards teams qualifying for year-end Challenge Cup. In 2016, the CCSS designation was put on hiatus over concerns that there was too much focus on these particular sports within OCR.

Between 2016 and 2018, members expressed concern that a clear distinction between varsity for conducting extramural recreational sports activities and was adopted at the 2019 OCR Plenary session and OCAA AGM.

RECPlay

This category covers extramural activity an OCR member campus participates in primarily at a local or regional level outside of RECFest, RECSeries or RECCup events.

RECFest

This category consists of one day multi-sport events (four to six sports/activities) hosted regionally and open primarily to OCR members from that region. They can be held on annual or semi-annual basis. This category allows organizers to offer variety of sporting combinations and to target specific participants groups if desired. Focus is on participation and fun!

RECSeries

This category covers any extramural sports/activities that offer three or more tournaments/events annually, and have participants from a minimum of six OCR member campuses representing at least two OCR regions at each tournament.

RECCup

In its ongoing effort to provide quality campus recreation programs that enhance participant's educational experiences, OCR may designate a RECSeries sport as a RECCup sport if it meets certain criteria. Such designation would result in that sport having a year-end OCR RECCup final event. the extramural tournament play.