WPA Subcommittee - Report to WPA Meeting 19 February 2009

After the meeting at Kapiti I purchased 5 visible vests at a total cost of $95.63 and these were used and good comments made about ability to easily find an Arbie when required.

Since then have purchased a further 3 vests at a cost of $64.13 and this now allows all 5 regional umpires to keep 1 in their possession while umpiring and allows the Umpire group to hold 3 vests for when Club umpires are called to assist. This has been already done successfully and Jan McHardy used one at the WPA Interclub held at Otaki the other week end. She has returned same to me.

When allocating umpires to clubs for WPA events emails have been sent to those club secretaries informing them who would be the umpire for the day and expect that whoever is in charge for the day inform all players of the umpire there and they will be able to find that umpire very quickly with the bright orange vest. Should a club wish to have an umpire for say their Open tournament then they need to contact me and I will endeavour to arrange this for them. This also has been done thru email.

We had a short meeting of umpires, club and regional on the Sat of the Kapiti Open Doubles where several things were discussed and I was asked to write to WPA with 3 questions.

1. Ask them to write to PNZ enquiring when they would set up exams in our district for the players who wish to become club and regional umpires.
2. Write to WPA asking them to write to PNZ enquiring when they are going to send a full umpiring kit to our region. Apparently they were supposed to do this but haven't seen one yet.
3. Write to WPA asking if they would please put in place a budget for the umpires group thus allowing the group to organize/do things without having to go back to a WPA meeting each time.

Regarding umpire exams for our region, I had correspondence with Barbara Whittington before the end of last year regarding setting the theory and practical papers and she replied to the effect that she would be getting on to it early in the new year but she has since had family health problems and am still waiting further information about this.

As far as I am aware no one has applied for the 28 cents per k allowance for travel but Brian would know better than me about that. Brian stated that Tony Mudgway had applied and been paid for his umpiring when he traveled from Wanganui to Upper Hutt for the Champ of Champ tournament.

Am hoping that once the PNZ AGM has finished, our umpire group would receive some answers to our queries very quickly.

So far have just kept players who are interested in umpiring in the loop and talking with them.