Maissaa Hachen of Syria whistles as the first referee during a match in Santa Fe.
Rosario and Santa Fe, Argentina, August 27, 2017 - A total of eleven women participated as referees and judges during the FIVB Volleyball Girls’ U18 World Championship that took place at the Newell’s Old Boys and National Technical University stadiums.
“This is a very interesting and important fact, in many World Championships I have had the opportunity to be in,” said Jose Ramon Perez Vento, member of the Referee Sub Committee for this event.
“I had not seen something like this before. Women’s role as referees and judges increased and in this tournament, we had more ladies than men,” he added.
From the group of 20 referees and judges, only nine men were nominated for this event. The rest of them were women with great experience in several tournaments and from a huge variety of countries like Australia, Cameroon, Cuba, Syria, Montenegro, the United States, China, Korea, Poland, Peru, and Russia.
The FIVB has promoted gender equality as part of its development strategy and the activities held at the World Championship in Argentina were not an exception.
The participation of women has also been important in several aspects of the game such as organisation, planning, and operations.
Even in coaching, there have been some special cases in Age Group competitions. In Argentina, Belarusian players were under the leadership of Natallia Melianuk. Almost at the same time in Bahrain, where the Boys’ U19 World Championship took place, Gabriela Isela Alarcon was in charge of the Mexican team.
For the Girls’ U18 World Championship four women referees were nominated from the Asian Confederation and three from the European Confederation. The African Confederation was represented with one, while the South American had one nominated and Norceca was represented by two.
The women referees who participated in this tournament were the following:
Carla Moorweg (AUS, Asian Confederation)
Ziling Wang (CHN, Asian Confederation)
Marthe Clémence Eyike (CMR, African Confederation)
Lourdes Perez (CUB, Norceca Confederation)
Joo-Hee Kang (KOR, Asian Confederation)
Sonja Simonovska (MNE, European Confederation)
Rocío Aida Huarcaya (PER, South American Confederation)
Katarrzyna Sokol (POL, Eropean Confederation)
Nadezhda Kozlova (RUS, European Confederation)
Maissaa Hachem (SYR, Asian Confederation)
Patricia Rolf (USA, Norceca Confederation)