OCF 2025-2026 Season

Hello Ontario Climbing community!

We hope you have all had an enjoyable summer.

We’re sure you’ve noticed by now that our OCF Competition Committee has put together a full and exciting schedule of events for the coming 2025-26 Seasons (please notice one small adjustment to the speed schedule with Q2 moving to October 11th).

We’ll be opening OCF 2025-26 Membership very soon (on a new platform) so please keep an eye out for that.

Almost all of the ingredients are in place to make this season a truly memorable one for our competitors but here is the truth: this season will only go as planned if we all pitch in together.

Put simply, we’ll need your help (especially if you’ve never helped out before).

Every event takes a team of volunteers - and those volunteers are parents like you - our judges, officials, check-in/registration people, ISO monitors, runners, belayers are all family members or supporters (not to mention committee members and our board). Some are passionate about climbing but most are just passionate about young climbers (often their own) having a great time in the sport they have chosen.

We are hoping since we know the schedule far in advance this season, that you will plan ahead to set aside a small bit of time to help out. (take a quick look now at your calendar, we’ll wait)

And now please take a quick second to express your interest here.

Volunteering isn’t just about filling a spot. It’s about showing up for our kids and community. If each family contributes just a little, no one carries too heavy of a load, and our kids get the best possible experience.

If you are interested in judging, don’t be intimidated, the CEC online module is really quick and easy and we’ll pair you with an experienced judge the first time, so you’ll be well supported. And otherwise, there are lots of other roles that we always need as well.

Even with our reduced schedule last year we struggled to get enough volunteer support to run successful competitions. Some of our athletes stepped up to help but this isn’t really a sustainable solution. We need C/D/E category parents especially to start now and ensure that the sport keeps building.

This problem of struggling for volunteer support isn’t unique to climbing, of course. Many other sports have adopted a mandatory volunteer policy (notably hockey, soccer and gymnastics).

We have discussed and explored a similar policy but we are hoping through community engagement, we can avoid it (for this coming season at least).