The Bhutan Amateur Athletic Federation (BAAF) is preparing to send a few track and field referees for the upcoming 2019 South Asian Games in Nepal.
For this purpose, coaches from twenty schools from across the country are attending a four day track and field referee course in the capital starting today.
At the moment, the federation is emphasizing on Grass Root Development, Kids and Teen Athletics and Talent Identification in the athletic fields.
BAAF’s General Secretary Dorji Tenzin said the program is to update technical officials in the districts with latest international rules.
“It is time for us now to have some of our technical officials featuring in at least South Asian games where we have few Bhutanese technical officials manning those regional competitions,” he added.
BAAF also expects to have enough and additional well trained technical persons in the country to promote the athletics.
Participants said the training is useful.
“We face challenges in our school firstly for not having a good playground, secondly for lack of athletic knowledge and we do not have platform for our youth to expose their talents. However, I am learning a lot from this course,” said Yeshi Pema, the coach of Nangkor Central School in Pema Gatshel.
A resource person from International Association of Athletics Federation is training the participants.
This is the second such course being conducted by BAAF.
It is being funded jointly by Bhutan Olympic Committee and Bhutan Amateur Athletics Federation.
