16/06/2020 17:00
Portuguese referees learn from four-time ‘Olympian’ Maria Amélia Villas-Boas
News from the National Federations
Porto, Portugal, June 16, 2020. Close to fifty Portuguese referees recently attended another webinar, which this time featured as a special guest from across the Atlantic, the Brazilian Maria Amélia Villas-Boas. It was the fifth event in the “A whistle with…” series. Previous episodes featured Serbian Zorica Bjelic, Secretary of the European Refereeing Commission, followed by Spanish elite Volleyball referee Susana Maria Rodriguez Jativa, Portuguese José Casanova, Secretary of the FIVB Refereeing Commission and Brazilian Paulo Turci, who, like Rodriguez, is due to officiate at the re-scheduled Tokyo Olympic Games in the summer of 2021.
With a 25-year-long career as an international Beach Volleyball referee, Maria Amélia has been a member of the FIVB Refereeing Commission since 2013, and she was present at four Olympic Games, three of them as a referee (Atlanta, Beijing and London), officiating at two finals – in Beijing and London. Moreover, she was responsible for the coordination of referees at the Rio 2016 Olympics and is a member of the Tokyo Olympic Games Control Committee as well.
After this session, where Maria Amélia thoroughly explained what it means to be “Officiating in a World Tour event”, Avelino Azevedo, President of the Portuguese Refereeing Commission, was satisfied with the result. “Maria Amélia Villas-Boas is well known in the world of Beach Volleyball and also in Portugal, so she could, in a detailed way, explain many of the facets that go unnoticed by referees in a Beach Volleyball international event. Adding to that the recent regulatory changes, mainly related to medical time-outs, she discussed a set of questions posed by participants related to the nomination and evaluation process within an event of this magnitude. It was another educational action carried out in cooperation with the Development Department and an excellent initiative to educate referees in this time of forced absence of competition,” he said.
The second part of this session included the review and discussion of some Beach Volleyball cases, through the viewing of some videos and with the collaboration of two Portuguese international referees. Maria Michelle Ferreira and Sandra Deveza presented, each one, two game cases, generating a dynamic exchange of opinions on the principles that should govern the interpretation of this type of situations.
The next such webinar is due to follow on June 22, with the presence of another special guest, who is going to travel to Tokyo next year as well: Spaniard José Maria Padron Hernandez, a reference name in international Beach Volleyball refereeing.
This set of initiatives aims at improving the knowledge of national referees and raise their performances to a higher level in the coming seasons, thus contributing, in a constructive and pedagogical way, to the improvement and development of Volleyball and Beach Volleyball in Portugal.
|