The latest EHF Zonal Umpires and Umpires Coaches Workshop took place in Vienna, Austria, 31st October – 2nd November. This is the latest workshop to be conducted through our Supporting National Growth (SNG) programme, which aims to help nations host low cost starter seminars.
Both men and women umpires from Switzerland, Czech Republic, Croatia, and Austria took part in this seminar, as well as 23 umpire’s coaches, coming from Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary,Switzerland, Slovakia, Greece, and Austria. They all had a very busy weekend under the supervision of course conductor Peter von Reth from the Netherlands, who was supported by Education Committee Member Thomas Eilmer from Austria.
The course took care of the basics: how to properly coach umpires and what how to help them improve.
Peter von Reth and Thomas Eilmer brought the participants a rich background of Top Level outdoor hockey and their recent very important experience as umpire manager in many important FIH and EHF tournaments.
The participants were split up into groups of four. Every group had to coach the umpires of one game, and then provide feedback, all under the supervision by Peter and Thomas. After they finished Peter and Thomas explained what they could do better, and discussed different approaches to umpire coaching.
After the matches, a debriefing meeting took place, where expectation and experience were discussed. Philipp Kucera, one of the participants said: “I am really happy that I got the opportunity to take part in this workshop. It was a pleasure to work with all these internationally experienced umpires. I learned a lot from them and it was nice to see that even I am not a very experienced umpire, I can help them just by asking a few questions. Our supervisors Peter and Thomas were also great and mentioned thingt, which we would have never thought about! We had a lot of fun! I also got a rare chance to get in contact with internationally umpires and umpire coaches, who can help me with gaining even more experience and getting better and better over time. I really want to thank everybody, who was involved and provided me the chance to get such an amazing weekend”.
The European Hockey Federation would like to thank Peter von Reth for his time and work on this seminar, as well as Austrian Hockey and Thomas Eilmer for hosting and organising the whole event.
Source and photographs: EHF