Breaking new ground for umpires

I started umpiring in 1998 doing U9 & U10 games for the Penrith Club in Sydney, where my son played and umpired, he and his mate wanted to umpire and as the taxi driver, I was attending the sessions as well and decided to give it a try.

In 1999 I became assistant coach to Chris Lehmann, we were the only adult umpires at the time and were asked to help train and coach the younger umpires – I was mentored at this time by David Blythe a retired experienced umpire, that mentoring continued until 2001, and was invaluable to me.

In 2000 the Penrith Valley Association was created from scratch to promote and expand AFL into the Western Sydney region. A new Umpires Group was needed and Chris Lehmann was appointed as the initial Umpire’s Co-ordinator. Unfortunately Chris passed away very early into the inaugural season and I was then appointed to the role.

The role entailed the recruiting, training, coaching and mentoring of the umpires, making the game day appointments, liaising with the Clubs and attending the monthly committee meetings.

As well as coaching I umpired games every week – in all age groups from Under 10 to Under 16, a lot of weekends running up to four games in a single day!

In 2007 I was appointed as the Scholarship Coach for the Umpires Development Academy for the year. This involved coaching the Development Academy umpires at 5 carnivals around the state throughout the season, as well as maintaining the weekly coaching and appointments of my group. It was a great experience, as it took me outside of my comfort zone and I learned a lot and met some really nice people and some very talented young umpires.

During this time I liaised with the AFL Sydney Umpires group to promote promising junior umpires to the Senior league. I’m a firm believer in progressing talented umpires forward

I continued in this role for nine seasons – the Association went through several name changes and re-organisations though this time, all the while our umpiring numbers continued to grow – it’s now GSJ Western Sydney.

At the end of the 2008 season I was invited to join the coaching staff of the Sydney AFL Umpiring Group taking up the role of the Western Sydney Development Coach in 2009. This entailed establishing from scratch another training base for the group in Western Sydney to retain umpires that were unable to make it to training into the City.

The training and coaching sessions were identical to the main group sessions held in Sydney. It also involved match day coaching of the umpires who were transitioning from Junior games to Senior games.

This group is now very well established at Blacktown with good numbers attending training every week. We also have junior umpires that train with the Senior group each week, and this has fostered camaraderie between the 2 groups. In 2009 I coached the Goal and Boundary Umpires at the NAB AFL Under 16 National Championships at Blacktown.

In 2010 I was on the organising committee for the National Umpires Coaching Conference held in conjunction with the AFL National Coaching Conference in Adelaide. This role was to develop the sessions specifically for the umpires attending the Conference.

In 2011, I became a Match Day Coach for the umpires running the Premier Division games in Sydney AFL.

In 2013 I was appointed to the role of Umpires’ Coach for the Black Diamond AFL. In doing so I became the first female Head Coach of a senior umpiring group in Australia.