Officials AGM and new website section

Friday 6th May 2016

Our scottishathletics Officials held their annual general meeting last weekend at the Emirates Arena, with members of the Officials Commission re-elected.

And, in a slight change of direction in terms of where our officials sit in the grand scheme of things within the scottishathletics family, it was agreed that the Officials Commission should now be fully integrated onto the board.

This effectively means Officials having a voice, via the Commission Convenor, at the regular scottishathletics board meetings – which are also attended by the heads of the Commissions in Track and Field; Road Running and Cross Country; and Hill Running.

It also means the Officials Commission positions of Convenor and Secretary will be elected at the main scottishathletics AGM in September each year.

This is a positive step and the Officials AGM agreed that there are benefits as follows:

*Involvement with future planning of SA

*Opportunity to be more involved and contribute at Board of Management meetings

*Direct access to numerous supporting mechanisms within SA (eg, technology, finance, development)

*To be an effective voice for Officials within SA

It was thus agreed that the Officials Commission ‘Terms of Reference’ would be revamped and updated to reflect the changes agreed and approved by the AGM.

An Open Forum discussion took place at the end of the AGM business covering topics such as Peer Groups, Timetabling, Events Team Performance, New Rule Book, 2016 Officials’ Conference.

A number of workshops were offered following lunch which many of the officials who were present attended.

These included setting up and using EDM (electronic distance measurement); designing and creating Call Room Schedules; preparing no-jump indicator boards for horizontal jumps; best practice when using radios and use of special equipment to assist with hearing impaired athletes at start of track races.

With thanks to Margaret Brown

Margaret Brown: Officials Commission Convenor

IMPROVED WEBSITE SECTION for OFFICIALS

In keeping with the change outlined above, and certainly very much in the spirit of it, we’ve taken some time recently to revamp and improve the Officials section on our website.

Follow the link here to take you to the Section:

https://www.scottishathletics.org.uk/officials/

Following a lot of hard work by Sue Gyford and Shona Malcolm, there’s now a great deal of content for officials to study on the section including details on the regular Newsletters and on-going Courses.

*There’s also an icon which takes you to an introduction to the members of the Officials Commission.

*And there is also an extensive Officials Toolkit full of useful downloadable documents to help officials as they go about their various roles, both at events and as they progress through their training.