The EHF’s biggest Educational event of the year is finally here! This weekend in Push Hockey Club, EHF will have coaches, officials and umpires helping and learning at the Push Hockey Trophy, which brings youth teams from the Netherlands and Belgium for a weekend of competition. The Officials and Umpires (who will umpire the whole tournament) will kick off today, but the coaches got an early start, arriving yesterday, August 25th.
Beginning with lunch, the Coaches 4 Europe (C4E) will meet for 4 days to complete the FIH Academy Level 2 assessment, the first half of which was completed by this group earlier this year in Rome.
Right after lunch, the coaches went straight to work, with a Coaching the Goalkeeper session led by Grahame Mansell-Grace. Grahame leads Goalkeeper talent development in England as is a qualified Coach Educator.
This was followed by a session on Defensive Techniques led by Norbert Nederlof. Norbert heads up C4E for EHF and is Technical Director for Klein Zwitzerland HC as well as being a qualified Coach Educator.
Over 30 umpires and 30 officials are in Breda today to begin their respective courses. The officials will be guided through a basic judges’ seminar, and will be rotating in and out of the tournament table, getting some hands on experience and some classroom style lectures.
The Umpires 4 Europe (U4E) is inaugurating its newest class in Breda, where they will umpire all the matches throughout the weekend. For the very first time, following the introduction of the Umpiring Pathway, the next batch of UDP applicants will also be in Breda, where they will ‘audition’ in front of the selection panel.