Aylesbury Vale Volleyball Club
Refereeing Course Report: Neil Bennett 30 September 2006
Neil attended a Grade 4 Referees' Course at Cambridge. The venue was Impington Sports Centre on the outskirts of Cambridge, which offered the faciliites of both a sports hall and a classroom environment at an education centre on the same site. The course started at 9.30am on both days and finished at around 5.30pm on Saturday and by 4pm on Sunday, dependent on how much of the allowed time for the exam paper was needed by each attendee.
The main tutor was Bernard Kilkenny (Chairman of the Volleyball England Referees' Commission and an International Referee) with input and contributions from Glynn Archibald (the Level 1 referee from Watford who has officiated at several Vale matches and came to give the refereeing and scoring workshop at the 28th September training night), with the admin handled by Kwok Ng (Eastern Region Referees' Coordinator from Cambridge).
There were 13 people on the course of mixed playing ability, up to Men's National League Division 1, and with a variety of objectives, from just wanting to understand the rules better, to wanting to train for future refereeing. The course was a mixture of theory and practical on the first day, with more theory on the second day culminating in an exam to gain the qualification, and included training and a test in scoring too.
The delivery was good, and interesting enough not to be boring. All in all, a good course which will help you to meet your objectives, independent of whether you just want to understand the rules better, or want to become confident enough to referee or score in the Herts league matches. We have 20 matches for which we have to provide officials, and probably only about half that number of members who are confident to referee or score on their own. It would be nice to at least double this number, to reduce the number of matches people have to officiate in! Please seriously consider going on the course; it is not always 2 days of one weekend, but is sometimes run on 1 day of 2 consecutive weekends, which makes it easier to accommodate in your busy social/family schedules.
Neil
