Basketball Victoria elevated their officials last week in the first steps of a reinvigorated plan to shift the refereeing landscape across the state.
Creating a culture of success for all officials is the mission Basketball Victoria’s Technical Officials Manager, Jo Chu, is willing to tackle in 2021.
Her objective with Basketball Victoria is to service her dedicated officials by providing resources, support and opportunities so each can flourish and reach their full potential.
Last Saturday night saw the journey towards this idyllic officiating landscape commence with a professional and personal development session targeting 2021 NBL1 South referees.
This session, hosted by internationally renowned public speaker Lisa McInnes-Smith, was made possible with the generous contribution from the Belgravia Foundation. The contribution aims to help Basketball Victoria deliver more support resources to improve the health and wellbeing of officials, coaches, players, administrators and supporters.
Created to help reduce barriers to participation in sport and connect people of diversity, disadvantage or disability, to sport and recreation programs, the Belgravia Foundation has recently launched a new mental health focused program – Take Charge MHeLP.
Take Charge MHeLP is a free online mental health training program that provides tools for sports sector workers and volunteers to support their own and others mental health. Basketball Victoria referees will also have access to this new eLearning program alongside other support initiatives delivered by Basketball Victoria.
Jo Chu said this event marked the beginning of a new era of support and betterment for officials in Victoria and the wider basketball community.
“This was an opportunity to bring our league officials together to ensure we’re all on the same page in terms of culture, mindset, leadership and high performance, and I am grateful to the Belgravia Foundation for their support of this initiative” Chu said.
“What I saw is a definite shift and everyone buying into the idea that they are not just leaders for this group, but they are leaders for the whole state,
“My one wish for the sport of Basketball is to recognise that the referees are participants of the sport and deserve the same value, respect and recognition as everyone that contributes their time and energy for the betterment of basketball.”
With a background in Sport Psychology and High Performance, McInnes-Smith‘s development session ignited an open dialogue between officials and organisers on their current landscape and what the future of refereeing in Victoria should push towards.
McInnes-Smith praised Jo Chu and the Basketball Victoria Technical Officials team for putting ideas into action and opening a conversation that will help Victorian basketball prosper.
“I think it’s an extraordinary thing that Jo Chu actually had the foresight and the vision to say let’s get some input in and let’s facilitate a process where we can talk about what we were talking about tonight,” McInnes-Smith said.
“We were really focused on can we help the officials to flourish in a changing environment,
“It’s changing and we want each and every one of them to flourish because when they flourish personally, it affects the way they referee, and they become better at what they do.”
Find out what our officials thought about this new outlook and venture ahead in the video below.