As a part of Marty’s role, he is required to run clinics with associations around the South Island
Not all of these associations had the luxury of having any formal referee development or structure, or associations may just want some upskilling. Just recently Marty and myself took a trip to the coast to do referee clinics in Hokitika, Greymouth and Buller.
Our day started off on Saturday at 6:15am where we travelled in our Miles Toyota Rav4 to Hokitika to do the first course. For a small town, we had around 12 people turn up to our clinic. We had a mixture of experienced referees and a lot of new referees who had no idea how to referee. This was a great start to our first trip –plenty of questions and game situations to deal with but also a lot of refreshers for those that have not been up to date with some of the rules that were disregarded so many years ago.
We trekked to Greymouth to which did not off to a great start; Marty unfortunately had to be admitted to hospital on our arrival with an infection in his leg. This meant that I had to do the Greymouth clinic solo. However, the kids that attended were ready to learn – not only as referees but as players also. This was a huge learning curve, not only for me but for the ones that attended this clinic. It was great to see that they have continuous support from the association.
The last leg of our trip was to Westport – this was the biggest of our turn outs. Majority of them were students who had not refereed at all so it was cool to see them willing to learn also. We tried to encourage everyone to pitch in with discussions and have them be proactive when we were out on the court. It was great to see the confidence in some of the referees especially since their knowledge is so minimal when it comes to refereeing.
Being able to supply this opportunity for the Coast and everywhere else is such a rewarding part of the job and is something that I personally enjoy.
The trip itself was great (even considering Marty going into hospital) and it was a great experience and learning curve. Hopefully we get the opportunity to go back and have a look at what they have learnt and see it all unfold in a game situation.
A huge thank you goes to Deb Dey from West Coast Basketball Association who organized our accommodation, meals and the referee clinics – we had a blast and hope you all learnt something new along the way!
Next up we have Ashburton and Timaru on Sunday 17th March, and a weekend trip to Oamaru and Dunedin on the Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th March so we are definitely looking forward to all of those.
Rebecca Moon
