As a club we have grown significantly over the last few years, and are now at an exciting stage where we want to expand to a fourth Men's team.
With this comes a lot of moving parts, one of which is supplying umpires. We already have five home games most Saturdays as well as Junior, Mixed and Masters games on a Sunday. We currently struggle for umpires week to week with our existing teams, and adding a fourth Men's team is not something we can do without umpiring support from our members.
And so, the club are paying England Hockey to run a Witney Hockey-only umpiring course to teach you how to umpire. In return, we ask you to give some of your time back to the club by umpiring, helping more members play the sport we all love.
The date for the course is Sunday 12th March, with more information to come from the club captains and team captains. If you are able, please put yourself forward to your captains for this course. If we get 16 volunteer umpires, that is realistically a couple of games each per season and will enable us to provide a much-needed fourth Men's team, as well as some respite for the current club umpires who frequently officiate multiple games a weekend.
If you have any questions please speak with your captain, Tom Dobson, Julia Nichols, or James Bartrip (our fantastic umpire coordinator) whose contact details you can get from your captain.
Thank you for your support as our local club continues to grow.