FEMALE ASSESSORS COURSE

This course will take place on Saturday May 12th at York Region Soccer Assoc., 101 Bradwick Drive, Concord.  See flyer for details.
Click Here for Flyer
Click HERE for entry form.

Great story - you can be inspired!

http://www.ssra.ca/2012_miryam_super_y_experience.htm

Female Initiative

W.I.S.E.R.

Women In Soccer Enhancing Referees – a new and exciting female initiative from the OSA.

The goal of the OSA W.I.S.E.R. initiative is to establish a program that will support and retain female soccer referees, and impart them with the tools to excel and advance, including:

• Facing the challenges of being a female soccer referee.
• Developing an action plan that will assist with increasing registration and retention numbers for female officials.
• Indentifying specific officiating opportunities.
• Recruiting more females into the OSA instructing and assessing programs.

Females leave soccer as officials, instructors and leaders partly due to inadequate opportunities to participate at a higher level and develop their skills.  Other contributing factors include the perception of a male dominated environment; lack of female role models; and family or educational responsibilities. 

We believe that support systems must be implemented to sustain women in these roles.  Of 10,600 registered soccer referees in Ontario, only 9.5% are female. 

The OSA plans to host a 2 day female referee symposium.  This will bring female sports leaders and officials into a central location to work together towards a common goal.

Providing knowledge and direction at this symposium will be:

• Female role models from soccer, and other team sports.
• Female mentors from the sport and business community.
• Leaders in the areas of dissent and harassment.
• Females in the Ontario refereeing environment (ages 16 to 55).

The goal of this symposium is to find the wants and needs of the female officials community; including perceived challenges that they face.  We will be pre-surveying the 1,000 female referees in Ontario; and as a result of the 2 processes (symposium and survey) we will be creating a Tactical Plan for the complete program that will launch in January 2012.

The symposium will be hosted in Vaughan, Ontario at the completion of the 2011 season (Oct/Nov 2011).

Our largest attrition rate is female referees between the ages of 16 and 25; the noted reasons are: 

• Lack of confidence 
• Limited role models/mentors within the soccer community
• Societal pressures; including family and educational commitments
• Lack of professional development opportunities within the sport
• Dissent and Abuse

We will build confidence by providing a safe networking and learning environment; we will develop role models by identifying mentors and leaders and including them in the program; we will breakdown societal pressures by continuing to market and showcase the females in our program and putting them in roles that highlight their strengths; and lastly we will provide female only courses, set up a mentoring and coaching system and invite community and industry leaders to provide professional development opportunities, on and off the field.

The main advisory task force will include industry leaders, officials of different age brackets and potential mentors.

For more information, email WISER Chair, Patty Pebbles refhre@cogeco.ca or Manager, Referee Development npearson@soccer.on.ca