New Umpires Wanted!

Each week during the season, there’s a small group of umpires giving up their time to umpire Hawks games at BRN. Although our higher-level fixtures get umpires provided by South Central Hockey, we usually have up to 5 or 6 other games where we need to provide our own umpires. There’s a similar picture on Sundays where we are asked to provide umpires for all our home junior fixtures. Although we have about 10 volunteers who are regularly able to umpire, we often struggle to cover all our matches without some individuals umpiring multiple games.

The club would therefore like to encourage many more people to qualify as umpires and be willing to umpire a small number of games during the season. Having 3-4 qualified umpires per team would be a great target for us to aim for.

To that end, we are looking for volunteers to take the “Level 1 Umpire” course which is organised by England Hockey. These courses are held      on-line and last around 2 hours. Once you have taken the course the club will arrange for you to umpire a few lower-level games at BRN and give you further support with the aim of getting you signed off as a qualified Level 1 umpire.

The cost of the on-line training is £30 and the club will reimburse the cost of this to anyone who umpires 3 games for the club after taking the course.

Umpiring is a great way to enhance your understanding of the game and to improve your own skills. All our existing umpires will also tell you that it’s a rewarding and enjoyable way of giving something back to the club.

So if you would like to take the EH Level 1 course, qualify as an umpire and then umpire the occasional game at BRN please contact our umpire coordinator, Andy Kaye, on Teamo or email him at andykaye10@gmail.com