Francophone Baseball and Softball Umpires Training

Our small collaborative project aimed to promote voluntary activities in sport, here in baseball and softball, and encourage mobility of volunteers in non-for-profit sport organizations. It also aimed to develop equal opportunities for volunteers from countries where baseball and softball are less developped due to lack of means. The goal was to promote mobility of volunteer umpire, in order to exchange about good practices in baseball umpiring. It created an activity of networking between volunteer umpires from different countries who are not usually meeting each other, when the umpire training are mostly at national level. They had the opportunity to exchange about the game, about the relationship with young and adult players and about the cooperation with other umpires on the field. This project also increased the cooperation within AFBS but also between the federatons in the European Union. It promoted voluntary activities in sports because it aimed to attract players or their faimily to commit in another way than playing in order to develop their sport. Baseball and Softball often lack volunteers umpires in European countries at local, regional and national level. Indeed, as they have few sessions of training organized, few umpires are trained but also few instructors, and few instructors mean few training... With this project, we wanted to multiply the offer of training for umpires in our partner countries.