As part of the Long Term Match Official Development rollout, and in coordination with Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport (CAAWS)  and with support from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Ontario Soccer recently launched a pilot for a new Mentorship Program.

Ex-FIFA Referee Sonia Denoncourt, current National Official Alexis Vaughan, and Provincial Official Kim Lee were in attendance last weekend to share their expertise and experiences with young, aspiring and upcoming officials. 

These match officials were in attendance to be trained in mentoring first and second year officials.  

"While our previous program was effective in some areas, we recognized that certain elements of the program needed to be improved - evaluation, peer-to-peer, gender mentoring and the understanding that mentoring is a positive, engaging moment in a new match officials career,” said Nicky Pearson, Ontario Soccer Manager Match Officials Development.  “We launched in London on June 15 to rave reviews and now by also hosting a female-only component, we feel that we are addressing the gaps that exist in the peer-to-peer and gender-specific mentoring." 

Moving forward (2019-2020) all mentors will have to go through this new program, and Ontario Soccer are pleased to be introducing it at the Club Level where the majority of the new match officials reside. 

"We need to start supporting our grassroots programming, and this is a good starting point for us," Pearson said. 

There are additional benefits to this new format. Mentors will be completing all the forms online and all mentors and Ontario Soccer will have access to these reports. 

This will allow the Match Official Development department to data-mine and discover where the gaps in development areas lay for new officials, and then build education and training around those areas. 

It will also allow Ontario Soccer to track the progress of all officials that are mentored.  

Click here to learn more about LTOD.