Some 15 candidates recently completed the FA Basic Referees’ Course at Spalding Grammar School – the fourth successive year this course has run.
The candidates were put through their paces by the Lincolnshire FA referee tutors.
Lincolnshire FA’s referee development officer Michael Brader led the course, along with experienced referee and trainer Rob Windle.
The course entailed a two-hour evening induction session, followed by a full weekend of theoretical and practical workshops in order to provide the young people with the knowledge and skills for refereeing, upon which they were assessed across the weekend.
As part of the wider qualification the students will now complete five matches before sitting the formal examination to fully qualify and begin officiating local matches.
The games they will officiate include some played in the Peterborough Junior Alliance League, meaning that teams in South Holland will benefit from this new influx of referees.
Assistant headteacher and head of PE Dave Endersbee said: “The school vision is to ‘inspire, challenge and enrich’, and I was particularly pleased to see ten of the candidates being SGS students who met this vision by undertaking this course.
“Michael and I have already spoken about arranging the course again for next year, to hopefully another cohort of keen participants.”
Those involved from Spalding Grammar were year ten students Muhib Akram, Jake Carles, Ryan Firth, Tads Mhere, Lucas Phillips and Henry Ward, and year 11 students Ollie Bellamy, Jordan Duffy, Oliver Wilkinson and Jakub Zera.
