Improving

This is the basic starting ramp for umpires looking to gain more experience and (usually) faster and more skilled matches.

If you're completely new to umpiring, you will need to complete the online requirements of England Hockey first before getting assessed to achieve your Level 1 badge.

Most people will complete this first step through their club, but you don't have to be a member of a club to do this.

Once you have completed the requirements to achieve Level 1 Unassessed, you will need to get some match practice under your belt before going for your Level 1 Assessed qualification. If you don't have easy access to this, please get in touch with Hatty Wood who manages Level 1 assessment for South Central. Her details are at the bottom of this explanation.

Most people will get that practice through their club and once they/the club feel they're ready, there are two routes to getting assessed.

Your club may have the resources to get the assessment done internally, but most clubs get in touch with Hatty to arrange for an independent assessor to come along and complete the assessment at a suitable match.

Please note that generally the match should be of Grade 3 Adult standard as a minimum, but there are some case-by-case exceptions that Hatty can advise on.

The requirements for you are to demonstrate competence in all the areas mentioned in this section, but you are not expected to be perfect! As a general rule, we would expect you to be making decisions about what you see, be in good positions to increase what you can see, and to show that you can effectively communicate with players through your communication and management skills.

The assessor will let you know immediately after the match if you have been successful and in most instances will give you pointers for improving your skills in one or two areas, whether you are successful or not. There's no limit to the number of times you can be assessed, but most people will pass first time or not need more than a couple of tries.

Make sure you follow the hints and tips in the Improving section of this website and you'll find you might even enjoy the experience!

Once you are Level 1 Assessed, you can continue umpiring club matches locally, or look at taking neutral appointments.

If you or your club want to arrange an assessment, please get in touch with Hatty Wood and she will confirm if your planned match is of a high enough standard and find one of our many approved Level 1 Assessors to come along to your game.

Once you have passed, the assessor will send the details back to EH to get this formally ratified. You will officially be a Level 1 Assessed umpire!

Once achieving Level 1 Assessed status, you can request to be included in the panel for neutral appointments. You do not have to give up playing, or make yourself available all day every weekend. Our appointers are very used to accommodating umpires who still wish to play or have other restrictions such as shift work or family commitments.

There are three important things to bear in mind:

1. Neutral appointments mean you will not be appointed to your club fixtures, so you'll be seeing teams you may not have seen before and working with umpires you may not have met before. This is not as scary as it sounds and we will provide support to you for at least your first match so you have someone cheering you on and giving you good advice about which bits to work on first.

2. You will need to ensure everything is in place for neutral appointments to happen - please look here for those details. As a general rule, we will send an assessor out to see your very first match. This is just so we can see you in action and take a view on which matches will be suitable for you initially. Your assessor will confirm you are umpiring well enough to take neutral appointments and will also give you some advice about improving your skills.

3. Taking neutral appointments usually requires a step up in skill level from club umpiring and a step up in your commitment to umpiring (caveats above notwithstanding). If you want to improve and move higher through the grades of hockey you umpire, you will need to spend an increasing amount of time on umpiring. This is for two reasons: a) match timings are such that if you are unable to commit to the most popular time slots for the level you want to umpire at, this will slow your progress because obviously we need to see you at a match of a suitable standard; b) we expect all neutrally appointed umpires to demonstrate personal commitment to improvement through appropriate interaction with the development team. We don't expect you to attend all Monday Mixer sessions (we know we're not the only draw on your time of an evening!) unless you want to, but we do expect you to engage with your colleague, the teams and developers attending your matches. Take their experience and thoughts and use it to get better! There are tips about that in the sections above on this page.

If you are umpiring men's games only, we will place you on either a Div 1 men's match in the north of the Area, or possibly a Div 2 men's match in the south of the Area.  Ideally we'd start everyone in Div 2, but we don't have enough umpires available to cover that commitment, so we will find something that we don't anticipate being excessively challenging for you and it's the luck of the draw as to what level it is. In some cases there's not a huge difference in skill level between the Divisions so ultimately it isn't a big deal. Most umpires starting in Div 2 quickly progress to Div 1 anyway.

If you are umpiring women's games only, you will be seen on a Div 1 match as that's the lowest level we appoint to. If you are happy to umpire both men's and women's we will usually want to see you on a match of each gender, but depending on how you perform at the first one, we may decide it's not necessary. This is the exception rather than the norm though. If you're wondering why we distinguish between umpiring the genders, please have a look in the Understanding area of this website.

Depending on your performance, your assessor will make a recommendation to the appointers and to the Lead Developer (or designated development lead) for the match level you can currently umpire competently at. This information is not secret, so please ask your assessor when they attend your match what they think.

After your match to join the neutral appointments panel, you will be in the system and should keep your availability up to date as outlined in the Understanding area of this site.

This is by far the question we get asked the most by newly qualified Level 1 Assessed umpires! The route to getting Level 1 Assessed is usually relatively quick and this can give false expectations of how quickly you can progress from there.

There is a notable exception to the information below, specifically for Young Umpires on the National Young Umpire Programme. If you are a young umpire (usually 23 or younger), or would like to be considered for that panel, please have a look at the Young Umpires page on this website for more.

Within South Central, the route to Level 2 requires you to have relevant experience and skills in umpiring that are usually acquired through taking neutral appointments and being assessed for competence at the level above. Practically, this means being assessed on a high level Division 1 match within the gender you prefer and then being assessed again on a Prem 2 match. In both matches you will need to achieve an assessment mark of 10, usually awarded by two different assessors, although that's not a hard rule (it's usually more about availability than anything else).

If you are interested in moving through the levels, we will ask you to volunteer for the Development Group, which simply means we want you to play an active role in your development through the use of things like a Personal Development Plan which can be found on the Resources page of this website.

Being on the Development group means we will prioritise you for development resource during the season. The usual pattern is to receive one or two coaching sessions where a developer attends your match and gives you hints and tips for improvement. When your developer feels you are ready (or if you're brave enough to ask yourself) we will arrange for an assessor to come and watch you and give you a performance score for that match.

Receiving coaching and assessment is part and parcel of progressing and shouldn't be considered unusual or significant. Read more about that here.

Because of the number of divisions and levels we appoint to, we also split Level 1 and Level 2 umpires into 'panels' within the levels to give appointers guidance on whether umpires are newer to a level or more experienced. This means you may receive an Above Panel mark (10) and be promoted to the next panel up within your Level. Generally this is done with one assessment, whereas as explained above, movement from Level 1 to Level 2 requires two assessment matches to be completed.

Lots of people ask how long this process takes. There's no hard and fast rule here - it's usually down to the individual and their skills on display. It's not unusual for an umpire to need a couple of seasons at Level 1 to be ready for Level 2, but sometimes it's quicker and sometimes it's longer.

If you umpire mainly men's matches and achieve Level 2 on a men's match, we will normally only need to see you once on a women's Prem 2 match (and for you to score a mark of 10) to also be promoted to Level 2 women's. If you're wondering about why we treat the genders separately, please head over to Understanding for more.

The system is in place to ensure that umpires are not promoted before they are ready as we don't want to put you on a match where you will be very out of depth and end up not wanting to umpire any more!

We appreciate that sometimes the routes upwards can feel a little bit like pushing water uphill. We need you to trust us that we know what we're doing - we have enough umpires who have been through the process who tell us that taking a bit longer was the best thing that happened for them. Trust the process and trust that we will always look to progress an umpire as fast as *they* can handle (and wish for) rather than against a dogmatic set of rules. You can be assessed as many times as you need to get where you want to go - we usually keep an assessment mark valid for around 12 months too, so you don't have to get everything done in a single season.

If you want to understand more about the specific assessment criteria for each level and the panels within them, you can get a copy of the assessment criteria in the Resources section of this website. Particularly good for insomnia...

It's worth saying from the start that South Central does not award the Level 3 badge. This is done at assessment on a National League game by an NPUA assessor. What we do is get you ready for that assessment, by assessing you on games that lead to a nomination to NPUA for assessment.

Many umpires will tell you that every step up in Level can feel like starting again! Same rules, different playground...

Because we have two Premier divisions that we appoint to in both men's and women's matches, you can appreciate there is a world of difference between umpiring the bottom two teams in Prem 2 versus the top two teams in Prem 1.

For that reason, we have two panels within Level 2 so we can ensure umpires are given appropriate matches according to their experience and skill. We may refer to umpires as P2 or P1 depending on the matches we think they are ready for.

It can help to consider that moving from P2 to P1 is almost the equivalent of moving up a Level such as from Level 1 to Level 2. At this point in an umpire's career, we are expecting you to be more than competent at technically umpiring, so looking at refining your skills and developing the management side of the game.

It's not unusual for developers to refer to 5% (or even 1%) increments - particularly for umpires progressing through P1. At this stage we are looking at refining your skills in small ways that together can add up to big improvements. We are very successful at developing umpires to reach Level 3 and have outstanding experience with developers who know how to get the best out of umpires.

We are spending increasing amounts of resource in 'continuity coaching', where one developer works closely with one umpire over the course of a few months, sometimes a full season or longer, so that they can ensure changes are properly bedded in before we consider nomination to Level 3.

The assessment process for moving from P2 to P1 is generally a single assessment on a match we think is a suitable standard. As long as a mark of 10 is achieved, we will move the umpire through. Achieving less than 10 is NOT a failure. It just means there's a bit more work to do and your assessor will always let you know what that is.

The assessment process for nomination to Level 3 is a bit more fluid as many umpires do not achieve a mark of 10 in two separate assessments one after the other. It's not at all unusual for an umpire to receive a mark of 9, then 10, then 9, then another 9 and finally a 10. The time it takes isn't really important, it's about consistent demonstration of the skills we need you to show. When we do give you the final 10 mark and let you know that we are nominating you for assessment at Level 3, you should be rightfully proud of everything you've achieved because it's not at all easy to get yourself to that stage and requires a lot of commitment and sometimes breaking down of very stubborn habits and beliefs!

Our preference is to ensure that you are ready to blow the socks off your Level 3 assessor rather than just scraping a pass. We want you to arrive at Level 3 with your skills and habits well embedded, ready to make the most of the development available within the National League and NPUA system. Once you achieve Level 3, your formal development moves outside South Central. That said, many Level 3 umpires stay connected with us: they come back to the Monday Mixer, keep in touch with the people who supported them and occasionally offer their services to our appointers when they are available. We love having them around, and their experience helps other umpires progress more quickly.

If you want to see the specific assessment criteria for moving through Level 2 and on to nomination for Level 3, have a look in the Resources section of this website.