Windhoek
The annual Bank Windhoek Schools Netball Super League presented a course for netball umpires, on new netball rules in Windhoek last weekend.
The three-day umpire course was facilitated by Netball South-Africa’s Marielouw van der Merwe, in conjunction with Netball Namibia and the Namibian Schools Sport Union (NSSU).
A total of 83 umpires from across the country converged in the Namibian capital Windhoek to discuss and gain valuable knowledge on how the new rules should be implemented and applied.
Van der Merwe, an internationally accredited umpire, presented a Level I and 2 Rule discussion to course participants, that dealt with the newly introduced rules governing the game of netball.
It proved to be a highly interactive course with lots of questions asked and interesting scenarios discussed by the participants. From the participants, 79 wrote the African C Award test, followed by practical, testing and grading of the African C Awards, which drew 40 entrants.
Van der Merwe was ably assisted by retired Namibian international Emsie Esterhuizen to grade 40 candidates, which saw 16 African C awards allocated.
“Thank you very much to Liezel Garbers, chairperson of the Bank Windhoek Schools Netball Super League Steering Committee, for the initiative to host an umpiring course in Namibia. I would also like to thank the sponsor, Bank Windhoek and Namibia Netball Federation for giving me the opportunity to be part of this initiative. The participants were eager to increase their knowledge of the rules and to better their netball umpiring skills,” said Marielouw.
“In the same breath, let me also thank Bank Windhoek for the sponsorship and ongoing support of netball, as well as Netball Namibia for their unwavering support, in particular Emsie Esterhuizen, who came from the Erongo Region to assist us with the grading.
“We gained a lot of valuable skills and experience from this course that will benefit the development of netball in Namibia,” Garbers said.