About 25 keen squash players from Hertfordshire made their way to the Gosling Stadium in Welwyn Garden City to attend a Refereeing and Rules course.
The course started at 6.45pm and was intended to last to 9.30 pm, no one had any idea what to expect.
William Winter was the lecturer for the evening; he made it extremely interesting. The lecture was interactive with the audience, which kept everyone’s attention. There were question and answer sessions, so everyone had an opportunity to get all his or her issues resolved.
The evening was split into two sessions with a break in between. The first session was on all aspects of the game excluding Interference, the second session concentrated on Interference.
This was not a lecture where you go through all the rules one at a time, this was from the perspective of refereeing and playing the game.
Some of the attendees decided to sit for the P Grade County Referee level, but this was optional and those who did not want to undertake the test still got a lot out of the evening.
The evening ended around 10.15 pm due to the involvement of all the participants. We went well over our allotted time.
I thoroughly recommend everyone to attend one of these courses if you get the opportunity. First the County needs more referees to call on. Without Referees there cannot be matches. Secondly even if you do not want to be a Referee, you will learn the rules (even if you think you know them now) and the reason why Referees make calls the way they do.