The Volleyball England Young Referees Award was created with assistance from a Youth Sport Trust project, match funded by V and United Utilities.

National Governing Bodies and Youth Sport Trust were concerned that the profile of technical sports officials such as judges, referees and scorers is ageing.

For many sports, there was not a formalised structure for enabling young people to take up these roles in the future.

Since June 2007, the Youth Sport Trust have developed twelve new Young Officials Awards.
These were created by full-time volunteers aged 20-25 working directly within nine National Governing Bodies (NGBs) of Sport.

In the first year, there was a target to recruit, train and deploy 1000 16-19 year old technical young officials by June 2008. This was exceeded.

This project sits alongside the formal structures that are already in place enabling young people to progress along pathways to be successful sports performers and coaches that are already well established in England.

Volleyball England and Youth Sport Trust believe it is essential to create a complimentary structure for technical sports officials through our Young Officials Project.

Revolutionise the age profile of technical sports officials and facilitate a massive growth in competitive sports opportunities, from grassroots level through to major national events, for young people throughout England against the background of the newly established annual UK School Games and London 2012.

 Age of candidates: 

14-19 years old

Competency of candidates:

No experience of volleyball is necessary but is helpful

Course length:

Between 4 and 6 hours. Can be split as the tutor wishes, e.g. one day of six hours, six days of one hour each etc.

Course content:

An introduction to refereeing 2v2 (Volley Sport), 3v3 (Mini Volley) and 4v4 (Super Mini Volley) junior versions of volleyball. The course is almost completely practically based, with no classroom needed, just sports hall space and junior volleyball height nets and badminton court sized courts.

They will learn through actively participating in the course in activities to improve their knowledge of the duties of volleyball officials and they will be given numerous opportunities to develop their skills throughout the day. The day will be structured developmentally, starting with the philosophy of Lets Play Volleyball and its first stage, Volley Sport, working through the developments to Mini Volley and Super Mini Volley.

Tutors:

Cost:

The course tutor pack resources costs £50. After purchase of this, the tutor can run the course as many times as they like. A further payment of £5 per candidate is made to Volleyball England, for which the candidate will receive a prize pack and certificate.

 The course will be available from mid-February. If you would like to register your interest to buy a tutor pack, please email

f.harding@volleyballengland.org

The course is the entry level of the Volleyball England officiating pathway.

It aims to enable young people with the skills they will need to progress up the officiating pathway, such as basic refereeing signals, techniques and player interaction. At this level, the focus is towards officiating at Lets Play Volleyball Festivals. For more information on Lets Play Volleyball festivals please click here.

The next level of volleyball is at 6v6 volleyball. The first officiating level for this is Grade IV. For information on Grade IV courses, please click here or on the Volleyball Search icon in the top right hand corner of the page

Two Young Referees Award Graduates have recently officiated as line judges at the World Championships First Round. For more information please visit:

http://www.youthsporttrust.org/page/news-story/volleyball/index.html