The referees school for the highest level of table tennis referees has kicked off for this year.

It happened twice in 2022 (FIN, SGP), once in 2023 (HKG) and now, in 2024 arrived to Czechia.

With the increase of events during the year in either, the ITTF, WTT, WTT youth, PTT and Masters, the need of International Referees, has became more and more needed internationally.

Petr Bohumsky (CZE) and Ramon Ortega Montes (ESP) trained 11 candidates from 9 countries. With the support of the Czech Table Tennis Association the IR school could take place in the Czech National Training Centre in Havirov, fully equipped with the most modern digital systems to run lessons and conferences.

Candidates received at home a package of assignments in draws, round robin calculations, scheduling, different real scenario cases to decide what to do and also in umpires scheduling.

During the four days course in Havirov a lot of interactions, sharing of knowledge, participation, practical exercises, games, role play activities and of course, written assessments and personal interview have taken place to be able to analyze not only the knowledge but also the working and reactions under stress situations and the personalities of the candidates.

After the analysis and assessment of all single parts, from assignments, attendance and active participation to written exams and personal interview:

Congratulations to our new International Referees:

• Alexandra BÖHMERT (Germany)
• Vaclav GROMNICA (Czechia)
• Pari KHALILI-MARANDI (Iran)
• Zeljko PRSA (Croatia)
• Lucia VOZDAROVA (Slovakia)

Petr BOHUMSKY: I deeply admire the efforts put forth by all candidates in their assignments, classwork, and exams. We were happy to share our experience with them. I am confident that it will greatly benefit their careers as referees. In the end, we now have five new international referees who now become our colleagues, and I hope to work with them in future tournaments to witness their skills in action.

Ramon ORTEGA-MONTES: Being attending this course has been a big pleasure, to see how the participants evolved from the first day, during the practical part, until the last day in which they demonstrate to have improved a lot in these days we have been working together, to understand the concepts we wanted to implement and even reacting to the so strange exercises that we put in place to make them move in that direction. Im really happy with the result.

Pari KHALILI-MARANDI stated: I am a retired school teacher, and here, in this course, we have learnt many positive things, useful for real live, now Im going to practice every week to be able to have more confidence in the technical things and being able to resolve them in an easy way even under stress.

Nicola CAPURSO: I have been FIFA football referee at high level for many years. One day, my friend invited me to a table tennis club and since that moment I got in love with it. I became an umpire at different levels and also getting the national referee level. Now I want to get also the international referee level.

Alexandra BOHMERT: Im so, so happy for being passing and now become an international referee thank you very much for everything, special thanks to the trainers and I hope to see them and my other colleagues again, this time, as referee team in some event.