Together with the 2022/23 season start, the VTB United League has opened the Refereeing Institute. The main onjective will be to train and improve Russian referees qualifications.
The League’s specialists have developed special educational programs for different levels of participants – short-term and long-term.
Interestingly, 16 students of the long-term course are 6 girls. In the near future, the best of them will also be able to work at the League games.
Within the framework of the new project, the first Zoom conference has already been held with 28 referees participation. The General Maganer of the League Ilona Korstin drew the attention of the referees to the fact that they had a unique chance to improve their level of refereeing and work on a regular basis at the League games.
– The Refereeing Institute is an absolutely free program. The League got all expenses for the organization, – Korstin said. – We are interested in improving the referees qualifications and we want to have our own homegrown high-class referees.
Our Refereeing Institute is called an institute. The Russian Basketball Federation is doing a lot of work to train referees of various levels, we do not overlap with the federation in any way. Our institute will be an elite school for those referees who we select and subsequently work with them. This project will be handled by the well-known referee Alexey Davydov, who has the necessary experience in refereeing and reputation. Having developed several programs, we will try to give certain knowledge and experience to the judges as soon as possible. We will connect the participants of the program to the Youth League, we will put the most promising for key games with experienced specialists. I am sure that soon we will have a new generation of the highest level referees.
Earlier, the VTB League with the amateur league UBA had referees summer camp, where the referees listened to lectures from the head of the VTB League refereeing department Nikolos Pitsilkas and also got practice of refereeing amateur games together with the leading referees. In the first half of September, another training camp was held during the pre-season tournament in Izhevsk, where the local Super League team Kupol-Rodniki provided great assistance in organizing the work. In addition to Pitsilkas, the leading referees of the VTB League Stanislav Valeev and Sergey Mikhailov were mentors.
Just before the start of the season, the League had a series of traditional seminars that were aimed directly at preparing for the season. At the meeting with the coaches and team captains, the current rules of the competition were discussed, the latest changes in the interpretation of the official rules of basketball, the main aspects of refereeing – the behavior of players, coaches, criteria for fouls, etc. were explained.
– It is important for us that coaches, players and referees are aware of innovations and understand game situations equally, – Ilona Korstin pointed out. – Therefore, it is not the first year that we have been organizing such meetings before the season with the head of the refereeing department Nicholas Picilkas.
