The Powering Podiums event from June 23, 2022, hosted online.

Many thanks to our Powering Podiums presenters, Dan Hanoomansingh, Jennifer Keith and David Hancock for providing us with great information based on their experiences in the world of judging and officiating.

As we return to sport a major talking point has been focused on the area of officials. Not only are we seeing a drop off of officials at all levels of participation, we are also seeing examples of the abuse of officials by coaches and parents attending events to ‘support’ their family members.

Officials are a key part of sport, without them our athletes cannot compete. Talent Identification is a recognized part of any athlete pathway and many athletes transition into coaching roles and become part of a coaching pathway.

Here are some of the takeaways from the session, and we also added the feedback from the Mentimeter questions (see below):

  • All sports are having challenges in finding officials
  • Many have not returned after COVID but there are other challenges to face
  • Difficulty in recruitment
  • We need retention strategies to keep trained officials in the pathway. When an experienced official leaves the sport all that knowledge and experience leaves with them.
  • Lack of mentorship leads to challenges in developing new officials.
  • Very often the officials who should be mentoring are having to officiate games due to the lack of officials across the board.
  • We need to focus on the ‘Officials Pathways’ to run alongside the Athlete and Coaching Pathways
  • Officials are assigned to games that are too challenging for them, this leads to inconsistency in decision making, conflict in the game and can lead to official walking away from the sport.
Mentimeter Questions Results

See Presentation Slides Here: