Young water polo referees share their love for officiating after U15s success

Volunteers are the lifeblood of all Swim England’s sports – without them, major events simply wouldn’t function.

Here, we spoke to some of our young water polo referees who shared what they love about officiating and why they would encourage others to follow in their footsteps.

The GoCardless U15 Swim England Water Polo National Age Group Championships back in November had one of the competitions youngest ever groups of officials in its history.

A team mixed with youth and experience featured a number of young referees, including former Great Britain international Holly Toone, Nicolae Revin, Alistair Dias Duggan and Merten Sacmacioglu.

The young quartet were all chosen by the delegates to officiate both the bronze and gold medal matches at the Female U15 Championships in Coventry, supported by their more senior counterparts.

The event ended in thrilling style with West London Penguin taking the gold after a nail-biting penalty shootout win over the City of Liverpool – with Caledonia taking home bronze.

Speaking after the conclusion of the final, Alistair described the weekend as ‘really fulfilling’.

He said: “It’s been a really great experience. It’s obviously a really good setup, getting lots and lots of kids playing water polo at a very high level.

“I’m involved in the sport and I knew the sport was looking for more officials so I gave it a go and I haven’t looked back. I now give it a go whenever I get the chance.

“When you do tournaments like these and you get the crowd who are able to watch, you get to see the players experience their first big tournament – it’s really fulfilling.

“Something that I know from playing the sport is that it only works with the volunteers doing what that are doing.

“So, for me to be able to give some of my time back to allow other people to experience that is really important and that will then hopefully bring them into wanting to volunteer more themselves to help grow the sport so that it can be as competitive as it can be.”

Growing in confidence and understanding

The performances of the officials impressed competition delegate, Trevor Pledger, who’s hopeful that the weekend showed a pathway for more younger officials for the future.

He added: “They’ve made huge progress. They’re really young compared to what we’ve had in previous years and that’s good for helping to bring new officials in.

“We’ve got to develop the officials alongside the players so to have the more experienced referees alongside them has been really good to support them.

“The U15s is the perfect competition for it too because it’s obviously not yet at the same pace as the senior game so it’s good to help the development of the referee.

“And I’ve seen definite improvement across the weekend. You can see that they’ve grown in confidence, in understanding, you can tell just by their body language.”

Anyone can get into officiating but for many, like Nicolae, it was the love of the sport that saw them become a referee.

He said: “I’ve been involved in the sport for more than 20 years now. I’ve been playing myself and now I’m both refereeing and playing. I just love the sport.

“But in my opinion being a good water polo referee is all about practice. You don’t have to have previously played the sport but you’ve got to want to get out there and referee as many games as you can – especially at events like the national age groups.

“You have delegates who are always available and giving you feedback so try do as many as possible and you just keep improving.

“This is the future of water polo in this country so it’s a huge pleasure to referee at this level.”

Both Alistair and Nicolae hope that their involvement encourages more people to support the sport and welcome a new generation of officials in this country.

Alistair added: “My advice would is to not be dissuaded by not being a hundred percent confident in the rules.

“There’s all sorts of people within the setup that if you are showing the dedication and you want to be involved in it, they’ll give you all the mentorship, guidance and support that you need.

“There’s all sorts of resources available online and again the more you’re doing it, the more confident you’ll feel, so you can do it with confidence.

“I know from being around the sport that without volunteers or officials we wouldn’t have any tournaments at all, so please do get involved.”

You can find out more about becoming a water polo official here.