February 14, 2005

The Pan American Hockey Federation is running an Umpires Coaches Course in Cuba from the 25th to the 27th February in Cuba in conjunction with the PAHF Men's U21 Championships.

The course is the first to be run on this continent and will be led by Eduardo Ruiz, the former Olympic and World Cup Umpire who is currently responsible for the development of umpires in Argentina. Eduardo brings a wealth of knowledge both as an umpire and an umpire coach and he will be using the latest computer video analysis to this course.

The aim of the course is to prepare the next generation of umpire coaches in the Americas with the tools to go into their respective Regions and run umpiring development courses, identify prospective international umpires, and give countries within their region a structure to start their own Umpiring Association and Umpiring Development Plan. This comes at a timely moment as we kick off the World Umpiring Boost on our continent and PAHF Umpiring Committee feels this will be the first step in making umpiring an integral part of every National Association in our continent.

Each region of the continent will be represented, with 2 participants from South America, 3 from Central America and the Caribbean Region, and 3 from North America - 3 men and 5 women - with current Umpire coaches Janice McClintock, Horacio Serveto and Richard Kentwell also in attendance.

For more information, please visit the Pan American Hockey Federation web site.

The Pan American Hockey Federation (PAHF) is recognized by the FIH as the governing continental federation for all field hockey in the Pan American region. There are 22 member Nations of the PAHF. For more information please contact info@panamhockey.org.