Women in Officiating Weekend (WOW) - Volleyball Alberta

2025 Event

Volleyball Alberta used their Take the Lead to support the Women in Officiating Weekend (WOW) from March 21-23, 2025. This annual event was held in Edmonton for the 15U and 18U Girls Premier #3. There were 40 referees and 8 mentors from around the province to referee 148 matches in 2 days, showing over 500 athletes the strength and support of women in refereeing in Alberta! The weekend also included a panel and guest speaker, former Olympian and current head coach og the NAIT Women's Volleyball team, Erminia Russo Thorpe, a certified Mental Performance Consultant Erin Brennan and Emily Clarke the first female head referee in U Sport football. 

Testimonial From Volleyball Alberta:

The Take the Lead project has made a huge impact over the 4 years we've run our WOW (Women in Officiating Weekend). Many of our barriers include not only on court battles (gender inequality and conflict management) but also off court issues. This event allows women referees to come together and share areas that they struggle with that a referee who is a man may not come across. Some of our referees juggle being working full time and managing a household so refereeing can be another stressor. This event showed that it does not have to be a stress and it can be a huge social outlet. We achieved this by not only having spaces and time to collaborate and socialize but also our panel of women gave us things to strive for as well as tools to use in stressful moments. This is proven in the feedback we received post event when we asked "What was their biggest takeaway" and "What they enjoyed most".

• "It is a powerful thing to have women encourage and support one another :)"
• "It's just so fun to meet other female referees who take their job in such a professional manner."
• "Refereeing is or can be a life long endeavor!"
• "The opportunity to meet and network with other female officials."

2024 Event

Volleyball Alberta used their Take the Lead to support the Women in Officiating Weekend (WOW) from April 5-7, 2024. This event brought together 42 women referees from across the province to officiate 191 games for 63 teams (approximately 756 athletes)! 

Highlights of the event included:

• Hearing 13U and 16U girls age groups teams comment on the importance of representation and seeing only women referees at their event. 
• The addition of a networking event with a speaker to discuss mental toughness and increasing self-esteem/confidence. Having this event on Friday night supported the opportunity for many strategies to be immediately implemented throughout the weekend. 
• When asked "What you enjoyed about the weekend", one referee said "Being able to just talk with other women refs and their experiences and to have parents come up and say they thought it was great that they had all women refs that weekend was enjoyable." and another mentioned "Connecting with females from across the province and particularly many from the south zones that I've never met."

This event runs alongside an existing competition, so it does not generate revenue as that competition has its own existing budget and expenses. The addition of WOW brings more referees and referee mentors to the competition, so additional matches have both a R1 and R2 (2 referees per match) that work together to foster an environment of learning and development. As a result of removing financial barriers to additional travel, hotel and food costs, the event was able to have women referees from across the province attend this event. Volleyball Alberta continues to work to generate funding to keep this annual event ongoing.