In one of last month’s #FRIDAYFOCUS pieces we looked at the recent U4E Scottish Exchange
This week we turn to the Netherlands, where the first part of the Dutch U4E Exchange weekend took place on 7th/8th October. The umpires Teresa Lipsky from Germany and Mohammad Qasim Waheed from Norway found their way to Santpoort-Noord in the Netherlands where their mentor Mirjam Wessel lives. For Teresa this took some time; there were no trains leaving from Hamburg because of the storm the day before. Her father ended up taking the weekend off and driving her by car to the Netherlands, arriving late in the evening of Friday 6th October!
On the Saturday both umpires had matches at Hockeyclub Hurley in Amstelveen.
Qasim, together with Wim Mooij, umpired the girls U16 of Hurley against Alliance and received feedback from Jasper Nagtzaam who also stayed for dinner as part of a “Meet and Greet” with an International umpire.
Because it was the “Week of the umpire”, a Dutch program to get positive attention for all the hockey umpires, Qasim even got a present after the match.
Teresa umpired the boys U18 Hurley against Rood-Wit with Maurits Veen. This was a very high intensity game with a tight 2-3 scoreline that they umpired well, and got compliments from the team coaches afterwards.
After the matches we found time to have a look at the new Wagener Stadium, where the Rabo EuroHockey Championships 2017 took place a couple of weeks ago, before having dinner at a local pub.
On Sunday Qasim got to umpire the Ladies Haarlem – Alliance with Jeroen Tan, a local derby played in the Dutch 1e klasse. This was a close match during the first half, but the second half saw Alliance break away to eventually win the game 2-1.
Teresa met up with Michiel Plugge to umpire the Ladies HBS – HIC in the Dutch Overgangsklasse. They got feedback from Paul Wessel and Teresa also got access to the video of the match afterwards.
Both umpires showed that they improved already since the Breda weekend. They got written feedback of this weekend by the coaches Jasper, Paul and Mirjam, so new things to work on and ways to keep improving themselves as umpires.