Welcome, everyone to this week’s blog. The weather outside is godawful, but I’ve been keeping warm with a busy week of netball! No match for us, but this week’s Back to Netball and training sessions were very game-intensive, meaning that instead of staring at the ceiling for hours as I toss and turn, unable to sleep after a late night of exercise, I crashed into bed on Monday night and promptly passed out.

However, the main note-worthy event of the week was the beginners umpiring course I attended at the weekend. Now some of you may be thinking, let’s not run before we can walk here, and you’d possibly be right, I had the same misgivings myself. I have issues with the rules at the best of times; being responsible for others playing the game is daunting to say the least. That said, I’m always up for trying new things, although they mildly terrify me, and I know that clubs are always in need of additional umpires – so although I’m currently light years away from being able to officially umpire a match, I thought nothing ventured, nothing gained, so off I went.

The first half an hour for me was a complete throwback to my school days, circa 1996. Not only did I feel like I was 12 years old again, the course was also full of 12 year olds (ok I don’t actually know how old they were, but give me some artistic licence). This in itself was fascinating to me; not only were these girls participating in extracurricular sport, which I didn’t even know existed when I was their age; they were half my age and probably knew double what I know about netball (this was later confirmed when some of the 12 year olds formed a team and pretty much thrashed us older ones).

Anyway, as part of feeling 12 again, there was an introduction whereby the instructor would throw the ball at each of us in turn, we’d have to say our name and then give a netball rule or hand signal. This in itself was fine; I’ve been playing long enough to throw something out there, but she decided to go in name alphabetical order. First name. For the record, if you have to participate in such an activity, I suggest you go by the name of Anna or Alex or Abby for the day, because when your name begins with V, it’s suddenly soooo much harder (others may sympathise with that horrible feeling when you undertake something like this and instantly forget everything you ever knew about netball, life as well as your own name). Also for the record, under pressure as a relatively new player, you may be able to instantly recall five or six netballing rules without too much trouble, or even nine or ten, but when you’re sixteenth out of sixteen, it’s suddenly virtually impossible.

Once this rather painful introduction was out of the way (my rule, for anyone interested, is that netball should be a non-contact sport – stating the flaming obvious, but desperate times call for desperate measures), we got down to the serious end of the course. Most netballers who have been playing a little while have got the basic rules down ok; it’d be hard not to, especially when you’re like me and constantly running into other people. The important bit is putting those rules into practice and this is essentially what umpiring comes down to. My assumption about umpiring was that you have to be some kind of omnipotent God-like creature who sees all and knows all, all of the time; but actually the main priority, at least at this basic stage, is what’s directly in front of you, i.e. the action round the ball. I actually found that putting the rules into practice was far easier than trying to regurgitate them as a ball comes flying towards your face.

Here’s the thing I didn’t expect to discover on the course: I quite liked umpiring. It was a bit like participating in sport but without the pressure of trying to win. You still get a fair bit of a workout running up and down the court, nobody barrels into you (or at least, it’s far less likely) and you get to tell people what to do.

Here’s the other thing I didn’t expect to discover on the course: there are approximately 352 ways to blow a whistle. Confidence is absolutely key in umpiring, as you have to make decisions quickly and stick to them – but confidence is also seemingly needed when it comes to handling a whistle. If you’re not confident with it, it will sense your fear and humiliate you, with the feeble squeak, the budgie, and the dribble being just a few of the embarrassing noises it can demonstrate. No, only confidence will result in the sharp P.E teacher-style blast required to reign supreme on the netball court.

At the end of the course, we were told that if we wanted to, we could be assessed and be given the formal qualification, but that we should get in as much practice as possible in the meantime. So lo and behold on Monday’s session, the coaching team encouraged me to have a go at umpiring a club training match. Let me tell you now, there is a world of difference between umpiring a game where the majority of the participants are half your height and you officially count as an adult, and a game where everyone on court is more experienced than you, half are qualified or semi-qualified umpires and most are considerably taller than you. Although, the important thing to remember, potential new players and future umpires, is that your decision as an umpire is the important one, so basically two fingers up to anyone who contests you, because they are not umpiring. Apart from the other umpire, but let’s not confuse matters.

Anyway, again I did quite enjoy it. Ok I probably missed important decisions all over the place, but I did it once, so dammit I can do it again, and just like playing netball, it’s all about the practice. And the coaches, bless them, never stop coaching even when they’re playing a match. I made the fatal error of apologising on Monday; not for a decision I made, but for the time I took to make it. “NEVER apologise for a decision Vicki!” came the scream from further up the court. Oops, sorry. Oh, er, I mean…I’m not sorry…erm….

Until next week,

Vicki x

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