By: Keith Murlless
Looking back at the 2019 beach season and beach referee training program, a few questions come to mind. Did we offer enough training opportunities? How many new officials did we bring to the sand? Did we serve the major tournaments well? Are we providing fun and profitable opportunities for our beach referees?
I’d say we’ve done well in the last few years!
In 2019 we offered:
- One National Beach Referee course (10 new National Referees)
- Three Zonal Beach Referee camps (25 new Zonal Referees)
- Two Beach Referee clinics in conjunction with Regions (16 new Local Referees)
In all, 51 beach officials earned or upgraded their certifications this summer. We now have over 500 active certified beach officials: approximately 200 Local, 200 Zonal, and 110 National/International. We have nearly doubled the number of certified beach officials in the last five years!
But is it enough? This year, 145 colleges will sponsor beach programs. There’s a lot of refereeing to do! We’ll need even more officials as our popular sport continues to grow.
The USAV Beach office offered 11 professional qualifier events and three major beach championships in 2019. Those brought 88 beach referees to the sand for over 300 days of paid beach officiating work. We referred officials to the AVP as well, where our referees worked eight professional competitions this season in some high-visibility settings.
Finally, I’m very pleased to report USA Volleyball has sent three new beach international candidates to NORCECA and eventually the FIVB. Huge kudos to Kirsten Boessneck, Magda Gleaves and Troy Gravett for their successes at the NORCECA Continental Beach Volleyball Referee course.
If you’re a certified beach official already, know that the collegiate assignors have already been securing talent for 2020’s spring events. If you still have time in your spring schedule, please update your blocks at Arbiter and send a note to the assignors.
Sean and Phil at the USAV Beach office will shortly post a calendar of events for the 2020 season. After that, I’ll begin assigning. Please note the major update to our assigning calendar. All beach officials should visit this site to enter their recent activity as this is the basis for your certification renewal.
Looking to become certified or take the next step?
We will offer three certification camps in 2020: a National course at the Collegiate Beach Championships in May and Zonal camps at both the Junior National Beach Tour Championships and High-Performance Championships in July.
We also look forward to bringing Zonal+ local clinics to a city near you! If you and your friends would like to join us on the sand, email us at beachofficials@usav.org and we’ll work with your Region to host a clinic for you. To get a head-start on your training, visit volleyballreftraining.com and review the materials posted under the Beach tabs in the pull-down menus.
It will be another busy year, so see you on the sand!
Congratulations to the following new Beach Referees
New Beach International Candidate Referees
- Kirsten Boessneck
- Magda Gleaves
- Troy Gravett
New Beach National Referees
- Donalda Abadie
- Kevin Barnes
- Kevin Finneran
- Ian Greene
- Rodolfo “Tito” Marrerro
- Ronnie Mutter
- Thang Nguyen
- Elvin Ottley
- Felicia Sardella
- Betsy Smith
New Beach Zonal Referees
- Kevin Benjamin
- Brad Beach
- Greg Bronson
- Kaylene Cragun
- Antoine Doumad
- Drake Dvorak
- Jeff Herrick
- Douglas Hong
- Lara Janjic
- Timlan Lubbers
- Stephanie Mahaley
- Tommy Maras
- Jason Marshall
- Benjamin Millan
- Niloofar Mojab
- Jennifer Morecraft
- JM Plummer
- Victor Schargorodski
- Toni Slagle
- Kendale Speyerer
- Madison Speyerer
- Robert Stratton
- Nathanael VanDerMeer
- Christina Wilson
- Julie Windall
New Beach Local Referees
- James Booker
- Douglas Broges
- Mark Carlson
- Neil Catapano
- Curtis Dice
- David Garcia
- Jean Katz
- Jacob Justice
- Tammy Liscomb
- Tuan Mai
- C Mahadev
- John-Reno St James
- Jameica Stoudemire
- Dan Walker
- Natalie Weppler
- Jeff Wheeler