Firstly, I am terrible at blogging! I clearly have no staying power and have only just not gotten around to writing up my last training experience.
Line Umpire Training Day – Part 2
Up and out early and heading to the tennis centre at about 8:30am on Saturday morning. When I arrived I gladly found the familiar faces of the other successful candidates from day one so I had a quick catch up with them and our complimentary cuppa!
First up was a quick re-introduction to our training team and then introductions for all the students/wannabelinespeople to break the ice. Then it was out on to the court to refresh our memories and go over calling the long lines during a serve, as we had done a fortnight previously. It’s amazing how easily I forgot how loud I am supposed to shout – this will definitely always be the hardest part for me. We ran through this fairly quickly as it was just to get us back in to the swing of things, no pun intended!
After about an hour we heading back to the classroom for some refreshments and to learn about all of the other duties of a line umpire. They showed us how to call all the other lines (service line, baseline, centre line) and explained that as well as calling the lines a line umpire may have to assist with changing calls, accompanying players on toilet breaks or measuring the net. It was really interesting to find out all the different duties but it does start to become a bit daunting, although at this stage I was still really excited and looking forward to trying it out on court.
After a quick lunch it was back on court to put in to practice what we had been taught about calling the other lines. We were split into teams and given a court each. We would them rotate positions to practice calling each position on court.
My first position was the baseline, a little different from what we’d been doing before because you get a seat, a definite benefit. All the while we are being coached and assessed on our performance. Apparently I looked really tense and kept being told to relax, truthfully, I was freezing so I think that’s all it was!
It was a tough afternoon, they deliberately had us on court for about 3 hours and on one or two occasions you do find your concentration slipping and become a little late with the calls. I would get so frustrated with myself for making wrong calls but overall I actually thought I did pretty well. This time around we wouldn’t have to wait to find out if we had passed or failed, we would be told on the day in a quick appraisal/interview. Luckily they were very accommodating and allowed me to go first as I had to rush off straight away to catch my train back home.
It was a very brief interview, or perhaps mine was because I looked poised to run to my taxi the minute they gave me the decision, with three of the trainers from the day, two of which had been in my group at one stage so had seem me in action. So, the moment of truth…
Good news – I passed!!
I was really delighted but I couldn’t really dwell on it or speak to anyone else from the course about it as I really had to run the second the interview was over. And now the training really begins.
