Netball Fiji’s Technical Officials Platform is on a trajectory of growth, with plans underway to expand capacity and garner increased interest to foster the sport’s development.
A total of three technical officials from Netball Fiji will be participating at the 2023 Pacific Games in the Solomon Islands, a significant increase from previous occasions where only one technical official represented Fiji.
Courtney Bitu, National Technical Officials Manager, highlighted the considerable expansion within the country’s technical officials landscape.
She explained that there was just THREE accredited technical official running Netball Fiji’s national campaigns and tournaments in previous years, now with the growth of tournaments and other campaign, their outreach efforts have seen remarkable growth, with over 200 applicants responding to their expression of interest calls.
“We started sending out EOI during the domestic netball tournament last year, with the interest of the game, we have also seen a growing numbers of interest on this field of technical official, this year our target is to continue our capacity building and we’ve manage to attract around 200 interested individual but we only pick the best 20 for the tournaments,” said Bitu.
Bitu explained that accreditation for technical officials is typically attained when Netball Fiji hosts international matches. Recent events like the World Cup Oceania Qualifier and the Fiji Pearls Quad Series have facilitated this expansion of their technical officials’ capacity.
“In the past, limited test matches hindered the accreditation process. However, the recent Oceania regional World Cup qualifier and the two quad series have been instrumental in expanding our technical officials’ pool,” Bitu emphasized.
“In terms of our active technical officials, we had only three in the past decade who’ve been constantly officiating national competitions, compared to this year in our data base we have almost 40 total technical officials accredited at district level and at National level we have around 20 of them as nationally accredited.”
Bitu is among the trio of Netball Fiji technical officials participating in the Pacific Games. She expressed the collective ambition to achieve international accreditation at the pacific Games, which would enable participation in World Netball campaigns.
“Traditionally, we sent one technical official, one bench official, and one umpire to the Pacific Games. However, this year’s request for three technical officials indicates a shift. We aim for these three officials to attain international accreditation, marking a significant step forward in our aspirations,” Bitu concluded.
