Building a Legacy – Palau Athletics Champions the Next Generation of Technical Officials
Conducting an international event every 5-10 years means that when the opportunity arises again you almost need to start again when it comes to training your Technical Officials. This was no different for Palau Athletics who had last held an international event in 2010 – the Micronesian Games. The Federation along with the support of the Oceania Athletics Association identified there was a need to train at least 40 technical officials and volunteers to make this challenge become a story of progress, empowerment, and legacy. As is the case in so many of our smaller Member Federations, the people who are organising the event, those who are competing are also those who we would expect to officiate at the event, so there was a definite need to identify a group of people who could dedicate themselves to officiating.
Albert Miller commenced the Technical Officials’ training whilst he was in Palau in a coaching and development role, by hosting an introductory training course. This course was primarily aimed at training young officials who may or may not have been competing at the Games. This course provided the foundation for the next step in the training, which was provided by OAA Executive Director and Officials’ Lecturer, Yvonne Mullins.
Yvonne travelled to Palau in advance of the Games and hosted a National Athletics Referee’s course which was attended by almost 40 aspiring technical officials. The training that Albert had provided proved beneficial in giving the potential TOs an overview of the rules of competition. With so many different disciplines in Track and Field it was important that everyone had an overview of every event. This approach proved successful when Officials showed up for every session during the Games, ready to put their knowledge into action.
The group of Technical Officials was mostly young athletes with an average age across the group of less than 28 year of age! What a great legacy this will leave for Palau Athletics for the future.
During the Games, every Technical Official attended every session. They were all so keen to learn and to put what they had learnt in the classroom into practice. Whilst a little shy to start with there was no shyness come the end of the Games. We were fortunate to have a group of people who wanted to be part of something great and the Palau Mini Games Athletics were truly great! The Athletics would not have been as successful without the influx of Palau Technical Officials – they were committed and focussed. Alongside them, experienced Technical Officials from Nauru, Guam, Cook Islands, FSM, Northern Mariana Islands, Australia, and New Zealand played a mentoring role—bridging experience with enthusiasm. How good was it to see Nauru, Guam, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Northern Mariana Islands, Tahiti, Australia and New Zealand represented at the Games by their Technical Officials.
We take this opportunity to thank both the Pacific Games Council and the Oceania National Olympic Committee for their support of the training of these Technical Officials and for enabling a several of the TOs to travel to the Games.
This is just the beginning for Palau Athletics, they are now looking forward to other opportunities to host international events, so that they are not 15 years in the making.
—ENDS—
