Community Umpire of the Year Award given to Roseanna Porter

For someone still so young Roseanna has the maturity and dedication of any long term umpire. Not only is she continually improving her individual umpiring to a high level she gives back to the game and looks to guide and develop other umpires in a nurturing and caring way.

At the beginning of 2021 Roseanna started her final year at university and still found the time to commit to umpire. In her personal endeavors she umpired the local premier women’s final, umpired the final at the female national under 18s tournament and was named for the first time on the NHC umpire panel.

Roseanna umpired at the Mainland and Otautahi Cup and was awarded the highest ranked under 18 umpire at the Canterbury Hockey Awards Night. Roseanna dedicates many hours to her own personal improvement sometimes forgoing playing opportunities to ensure she can umpire. She is known within the community as one of our strongest female umpires and always builds a positive rapport with the community around her.

The next place Roseanna really dedicated herself to was umpire development. Roseanna helped coordinate the newly established under 13 and under 15 festivals. She provided structured feedback sessions post match with the umpire pairings and between her and James ensured suitable umpires received HNZ practical sign off for their junior/community badges.

Another role Rosanna held was a venue supervisor at one of our main playing venues on sundays. Not only did she run the venue but she went above and beyond her job role and worked with up and coming adult umpires providing them coaching sessions, half time team talks and shadowed them if required to ensure they had a confident start to their umpiring experience. Not only did she help upskill these umpires but she herself would fill in when umpires did not show up (something which was not required of her in her role)

The final piece of the puzzle is Roseanna’s role as umpire coordinator for her club. Every week her club gets numerous umpire appointments they need to fill. Roseanna coordinates suitable umpires to successful fill these roles and again will step in herself when nobody is available.

Roseanna has an all round passion for umpiring and dedicates so much time to herself and others to make sure this space is positive and safe space for people to want to join, be a part of and develop. Without her willingness there would be big holes to fill and less passion in this space.