Netball New Zealand have today announced the National Umpire Squad and Zone Umpire Watchlist for the 2018 season.
Those included in the 16 strong National Umpire Squad will take control of games in the ANZ Premiership, Beko Netball
League and Netball Super Club competitions, covering over 90 games during the 2018 domestic season.
Returning to the Squad in 2018 will be Jono Bredin after having a year away from Netball, as well as Danielle Maulder
and Tania Fink who will return after taking time to have children. Lisa McPhail will join the squad after six years in
the UK where she represented New Zealand umpiring internationally.
Making the step up to the Squad this year is Gracey Farquharson who spent 2017 on the Zone Umpire Watchlist and has had
two years of strong performances at the Netball NZ U19 & NZ Secondary Schools Champs.
The Squad is made up of seven Umpires who hold their INF International Umpire Award (Armstrong-Lush, Bredin, Fowler,
Hay, Maulder, McPhail and Simpson) as well as three
INF International Talent Identified Umpires (Fink, Metekingi and Stuart).
Bredin, McPhail and Simpson will also represent New Zealand at the 2018 Gold Coast Commonwealth Games in April.
The Zone Umpire Watchlist is a group of umpires who have been identified as having the potential to be elite umpires in
the future and are all at different stages of their development.
The eight umpires on the Watchlist include newcomers Scott Bailey and Maru Delamere who will be joining for the first
time in 2018. All Watchlist umpires will be attending the NNZ National Development Camp at St Peters School, Cambridge
from 19-23 January and are likely to be involved in domestic events throughout 2018.
The National Umpire Squad will be coached by Colleen Bond, Fay Meiklejohn and Jan Teesdale.