Sweden - Historic referees’ clinic

From www.independent.com.mt
Download source here

This week’s column deals with my sport, basketball, and my personal related activity, refereeing.

However the main item involved is neither basketball nor refereeing but deaf people.

In the past weeks, surely unknown to many, there was a historic event that took place in Stockholm, Sweden. In fact this beautiful city hosted the first ever deaf basketball referees’ clinic. Such an event was also the world’s first also in deaf sports history.

The Deaf International Basketball Federation, DIBF, had envisaged a need for this clinic and subsequently arranged it together with the Stockholm Basketball Association and FIBA.

Basketball has now been increasing popular among elite deaf athletes around the world. Several international and national basketball competitions have already been held for several years.

The DIBF is a world governing body for international deaf basketball in cooperation with the Deaflympics and its confederations. In fact it is basically an independent association composed of the national organisations governing deaf basketball which was established in May 1998 in Turkku, Finland. This organisation recommended that upon acting as a world governing body for international deaf basketball, it can focus entirely on the core of and also to improve the standards and the well beings of deaf basketball players.

The clinic in Sweden proved a great success as eleven deaf referees, from around the world, finally participated. Each one of these referees were not just merely enthusiasts or beginners but all held actual referee licences of different levels from their home countries.

Overall, the clinic dealt with the FIBA rules and different international officiating styles of games. During this event, fellow FIBA international referees (who are both my personal friends and have refereed with), namely Swedes Oscar Lefwerth and Asa Johansson instructed and trained the deaf participants in the concepts of three-person referees officiating and mechanics.

After finishing the clinic, the official DIBF International Referee Licence and Referee Evaluating Authority was delivered to each participant.

The FIBA World Sports Director Lubomir Kotleba who was invited by the DIBF to this historical event to act as the FIBA representative and lecturer, said “I am very happy to be part of this event and welcome this development to include deaf referees in the FIBA family. Some of the deaf referees hold a surprisingly high and even level and I will not be surprised to see some of them in the future holding FIBA Referee Licence.”

Orjan Engberg, the Stockholm Basketball Association official, FIBA Commissioner and also a lecturer at the clinic said “..now that the sounding devices are more and more complementing with visual signals, it will be easier for deaf referees, with their use to different visual signals, to work among the normal hearing referees. I welcome this development.”

In the future, other courses are supposed to be arranged also for the technical commissioners. These are supposed to be organized with the cooperation of official FIBA commissioners in order to be able to produce DIBF technical commissioners which would be able to supervise and control the future DIBF-championships independently.

The immediate important task for the deaf referees who graduated form this deaf referees’ clinic in Sweden will be the 2nd DIBF Deaf World Basketball Championships to be held in Guangzhou, China between the 22nd and 30th of June.

The 11 deaf referees (hailing two from Germany, Greece and the USA and individual referees from Italy, Sweden. Chinese Taipei, New Zealand and Ukraine) will join other normal hearing referees to officiate in these Championships where a total of sixteen countries will compete in the men’s category and nine countries in the female category.

What a final!

I am sure that the pure and real basketball lovers caught at least a glimpse of last Sunday’s Euroleague final in Athens between Panathinaikos and CSKA Moscow.

Anyone who never watched basketball surely would have been surprised in seeing the massive atmosphere in this Greek gym where 19,000 supporters were literally at times screaming their heads off.

With all honesty I am ready to state that even though the NBA (and even the NCAA) in America draws bigger crowds, the atmosphere is nothing like that seen last Sunday in Athens.

Reports stated that there were over a thousand Russian supporters (coming over with the CSKA side) but these were totally weighed down by the over ten thousand Greek Panathinaikos supporters all dressed in their customary green.

Panathinaikos, shooting at 68 percent in the first half, were 46-36 ahead at half-time.

CSKA started on a high note in the second half and quickly clawed back to 45-47.

These were maybe the most nervous minutes of the game as Panathinaikos were called for a technical and CSKA forged 51-50 in the lead.

The crowd were behind the Greeks and these rallied back to a 65-57 lead with ten minutes to go.

A minute from the end it was a tight 87-85 but Panathinaikos opened a four-point lead and then shot accurately from the free-throw line to win their fourth ever Euroleague title.

Amazing also what the fact that Panathinaikos’ coach, the much renowned and intelligent Zeljko Obradovic not only won his second Euroleague title with Panathinaikos (the first in 2002) but this was his overall sixth Euroleague title won with four different clubs!