World Squash Officiating Builds Momentum

By WSO Media

As squash continues to emerge from the restrictions and damage caused by the pandemic, the WSO – jointly launched by the WSF and PSA as an online education and appraisal portal designed to standardise officiating qualifications worldwide – can report significant progress. There are now well over 1,500 individuals registered on the WSO Platform with 900 who have achieved at least the basic WSO Level 0 qualification.

Since we welcomed Irish Squash as our first partner back in May 2021, we have been building relationships and strengthening ties with countries from all around the world. After a positive start to the year, we have now officially partnered with nineteen Member Nation Federations.

Our partners include some of the major squash playing countries such as England, Australia, New Zealand and Egypt. Europe is heavily represented with 10 Member Nation Federations whilst all other WSO Regions are now represented.

We realise that each nation has a different refereeing structure and are at differing stages of development. Hence, we have maintained an open approach to tailoring the development plans with each country so that we can embrace the good work that already exists whilst helping to fill the gaps and provide the support and structure to both support the existing workforce and to start to attract a new generation of officials.

WSF CEO William Louis-Marie said: “I’d like to thank all our Member Nation Federations which have decided to join WSO and closely collaborate to further develop a critical pillar of our sport. Since the official launch, we have arranged countless meetings and webinars to convince our national associations that WSO will open new opportunities to grow and standardise our officiating qualifications around the world.

“We are confident the addition of new levels in the coming months will foster more and more Member Nation Federations and individuals to embark upon the WSO journey.”

Since the launch, WSO has continued to develop and evolve with additional content being added all the time. Levels 0-3 are live, whilst Levels 4 and 5 are in development with Level 4 due for a summer 2022 release. Assessor and mentoring modules are seen as vital elements of the WSO system and are also in the pipeline.

Continued individual learning and development is essential to the success of WSO and we are looking at new and interactive ways of communicating with and educating WSO members. In December we ran our first WSO Webinar Workshop or ‘Refinar’ as we titled it. This was a huge success and gave WSO members the opportunity to examine a range of clips from a recent PSA tournament and to hear expert analysis of the decisions and the decision making process. In January we successfully ran Refinar2, with the plan being that these webinars become a regular slot on the calendar.

“The overarching intentions of the WSO platform is to make refereeing more accessible and consistent across the globe, with our aim of creating and improving more and more world class referees. This is a vital part of improving everyone’s enjoyment of the sport at both amateur and professional level,” added PSA’s CEO, Alex Gough.

We are delighted by the way WSO is progressing and we offer a warm welcome to the nations and individuals that have already joined the WSO family. We are excited to be developing officiating, standardising qualifications and driving refereeing forward. We are keen to continue dialogue with additional Member Nation Federations and would urge you to get in touch at [email protected].

Find out more about World Squash Officiating.

Full list of WSO Partner Member Nation Federations