Day 3 - Tuesday April 29

The day started off with a celebration of Africa Day where we were surprised by a cultural Gumboot dance by Caswell from South Africa. Antonio Zimbabwe who is a coach with the National Coaching Institute also shared his culture with us as did Jay from Tanzania. Throughout the day we were exposed to song dance and drumming. We even warmed up for our outdoor session in African style with clapping and dancing. It was a blast!

African Drumming

After our Africa Day introduction we saw the second round of presentations by the remaining promoters. Again the standard was good with many varied themes. We listened to presentations on subjects such as Youth Panels, How to promote hockey to young people, How to help people stricken by poverty and How to get more men to play field hockey in the USA. Everybody had put a lot of effort in and was keen to show what had been achieved in their country.

German Youth Panel

After lunch we started the Umpiring workshop led by Gill Gemming from NZ. We had to describe umpiring attributes and values as well as the practicalities of umpiring a match. This led to a 5 a side tournament where we could practice our umpiring skills.

We had 5 teams and being Africa Day the teams were named after African countries. The games were competitive. One of the important aspects of this session was that there was no back chat to the umpires and who ever broke the rule had to do push ups! In the midst of this Wendy Stewart, a Canadian Umpire who is umpiring at the World Hockey Olympic Qualifying Tournament. She shared with us some of her experiences as an International Umpire and we asked many questions which gave us a better understanding of her role and the commitment it takes to be an international umpire.

Hanging out  with wendy

The day culminated with us watching the Canada V Malaysia game. Canada won the game 1-0 so everyone was happy. It was a really exciting day.