BASKETBALL NSW LAUNCHES ELITE REFEREE SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM VIA NBL

Basketball NSW is pleased to announce the Elite Referee Scholarship Program, a tailored mentoring initiative for BNSW Elite referees. This program will offer recipients professional advancement, assistance, and growth by introducing them to top-level officiating expertise and methods through the NBL’s referee department.

The scholarship program will provide guidance to referees wishing to emerge as elite referees with the program including bespoke individual and group interaction, plans and assessments. The program will form a key part of the High Performance and Elite Referee Pathway for selected officials in BNSW. The number of scholarships each year will be linear with the number of participants that BNSW has in the NRDP and the ERP program.

“We are very excited to offer this initiative to our skilled officials, and have the NBL on board to further enhance the experience by having referees from a national level mentor the scholarship holders. This is a project that we are proud of, and comes from a heavy focus on ensuring we are not only growing our Referee & Technical Officials, but also providing multiple development opportunities to refine their skills to an elite level,” says CEO of BNSW, Maria Nordstrom.

Our NRDP and ERP participants for this year are listed below:

Individual’s that participate in the Scholarship Program will be mentored by an existing NBL Referee, which will provide coaching targeted towards elite performance. This will ensure the individual is up-skilled with current play calling trends for elite competitions via this direct access to the full-time referees, under the leadership of the NBL Head of Referees.

Referees will be deemed as eligible for the Scholarship Program by a set of criteria, including displaying their potential and demonstrating the attributes and qualities of an elite official, hold a minimum State Grade referee qualification, and be officiating in the NBL1 East  league (Men or Women). Each recipient’s scholarship will be a minimum duration of one year, and a maximum of two.

The Scholarship Program has a set curriculum consisting of two parts; ‘Make Your Officiating Elite’ and ‘Experience NBL Referee’.

Part A, ‘Make Your Officiating Elite’ covers the NBL1 season, running from April to August, and will use examples of footage from the league for engagement and education. This will include:

• Initial Goal Setting – documenting short-term and long-term goals.
• Preseason Group Education – via face-to-face attendance.
• Monthly 1v1 Meeting – direct with recipient’s mentors.
• Individual Development Plan – to identify each participant’s strengths and weaknesses.
• Weekly Group Meeting – for play calling review together as a group.
• Group In-season Face to Face Visit – for education and review of in-venue performance.
• Game Review Analysis – via HUDL game tape footage.

Part B, ‘Experience NBL Referee’  will run alongside the NBL season from September to March, which will be used for the execution of this part of the scholarship. This will include NBL experiences, training, development and material such as the following:

• Post Season 1v1 Meeting.
• Group Revision and Review via Face-to-Face Attendance.
• Game Preparation of the Mentor – experience the build-up to gameday.
• Game Day Experience – listen in to the conversation.
• Revision of NBL Game Footage of Playing, Calling and Decision Making.
• Invitation for Game Day Attendance next to the Emergency Referee in-venue.
• Membership of the BNSW Elite Referee Scholarship Mentoring Program Page.

The BNSW Elite Referee Scholarship will tip-off on the 20th of November, and encompasses the 2024 NBL1 East and 2024/25 NBL seasons. BNSW looks forward to the launch of this game-changing program, which will level up the talented officials we have in the state!

To learn more about the scope of BNSW’s Technical Officials, and to start your journey as an Official (whether it be referee, scoretable or statistician), click HERE.