The Hamilton Tigercats

The Varsity Tigercats are a non for profit Organization immersed in grassroots, development and success, offering Rep programming for players 13-19 years of age. The AAA Tigercats play in the Ontario Provincial Football League while the AA Tigercats play in the Ontario Football Conference. The Tigercats are members of the Hamilton Football Association along with the Hamilton Jr Tigercats - who offer programming for players 7-14 in both spring and fall formats. The past few years for the Tigercats have been extremely interesting seeing numerous mergers, partnerships and brand changes.

History

The HWMFA origins back to 1982, when Malcolm Macrae created
Flamborough Minor Football with a group of peewee-aged players who played against Burlington. Over the next few years with volunteers like Walter Wedges (also founder of Brantford Minor Football and the Ontario Varsity Football League), the association grew into Hamilton Wentworth Minor Football and became a founding member of the Southwestern Ontario Football Association of Leagues. In 2002 the HWMFA signed a 100-year lease with the Town of Flamborough for fields in Rockton behind the Beverly Arena. There the HWMFA built two football fields and the association grew to over 1200 players playing in the HWMFA house league, SOFAL and the OVFL with its Rep teams playing as the Wentworth Panthers.

In 2013 there was a press conference that announced the merging partnership between the HWMFA Jr. Tigercats, Wentworth Panthers, the CJFL Hamilton Hurricanes, to form one united football organization for players 7-22 years of age.  The Rep Program played as the "New Era" Hamilton Hurricanes in the Ontario Football Conference, where it experienced immediate success winning Senior Championships in 2013 & 2014 and JV Championship in 2014.

In 2014 the HWMFA merged minor programs with Hamilton Minor Football Association (HMFA) to form the HFA-Hamilton Football Association which now included the OFC Hurricane programs. Under this new identity the HFA spearheaded numerous development initiatives including having all its coaches certified SAFE CONTACT trained as well as teaming up with local high schools in a forty thousand dollar equipment partnership.

In 2015, with both minor and varsity programs sharing successes, the HFA discussed the need to rebrand the existing minor Jr Ticats and Varsity Hurricanes to express organizational unity and solidarity. In the beginning of 2016, the old Varsity Hurricanes had resurrected as the Varsity Tigercats and won both 2016 Bantam and Varsity OFC Championships.  After 2016, the HFA jumped at an opportunity to be a founding father of a new competitive OPFL, and in 2017 the Varsity Tigercats announced that its AAA programs would be competing in the OPFL and AA programs in the OFC.