Sri Lanka Squash has announced the signing of a partnership with World Squash Officiating (WSO), the joint initiative of the World Squash Federation (WSF) and the Professional Squash Association (PSA) to create an online education and assessment portal to standardise officiating qualifications worldwide.

Sri Lanka Squash is planning to use the framework and methods promoted by the WSO platform to build expertise and popularise refereeing and broad base the knowledge of the sport to a much wider and younger audience in the island.

By partnering with WSO and its referee model, Sri Lanka Squash hopes to provide a more readily accessible way to launch refereeing as part-time and a full-time activity for aspirants. 

WSO Manager Chris Nutley commented “We offer a warm welcome to our friends at Sri Lanka Squash and look forward to working with them and developing a long and fruitful partnership. We hope to help them build a solid refereeing base within the country who can service their array of domestic events and tournaments. It is also hoped that over time this will also lead to the emergence of some elite level referees who can go on and represent Sri Lanka on the world stage.”

Commenting on the partnership President of Sri Lanka Squash, Suren Kohombange says: “We at Sri Lanka Squash believe that having a good referring framework and skill development program is essential for our endeavour to popularise and broad base the game in the Island. Analysing the content and the framework available with WSO platform impressed us and I believe it is ideal for the new generation of players and helps demystify the technical challenges faced by a referee professional”.

Secretary of Sri Lanka Squash, Eranga Alwis added “It’s a framework where continuous learning is available, and we see this as an ideal method of introducing the rules of the game and building a ground up refereeing pool for our future local and international tournaments.”