Girl Power in Beach Volleyball: Nina Hobi speaks about women referees
The 2011 Myslowice Open Women’s Beach Volleyball Tournament is underway in Poland this week. The tournament is women’s event and it has invited beach volleyball duos from around the world.
Nini Hobi, the Austrian referee has also travelled to Myslowice. She comes with experience of six years on the SWATCH FIVB World Tour. The 30-year old Austrian lady is performing her duties as referee at the Myslowice Open.
Hobi takes a lot of pride in her for being a female referee in the male dominated profession. She is biology PhD student and has the knack of her work. She is one of only few female referees in the sport of beach volleyball. Hobi started as an indoor volleyball
player 12 years ago. She played in the Austrian National League for quite some time and then decided to become a referee.
It was a challenging job, which often required Hobi to travel outside Europe. She suffered family disruption and stayed in different parts of the world. She took this profession seriously and earned a very good fame in short span of time.
She urged other women to adopt this profession and said, “It’s so different to switch from the lab to the court and I really enjoy this aspect. I like everyone here. I like the sport because in comparison to football it’s very fair. Everybody plays fair
and you just have to do your job.”
Sharing her thoughts about the future, Hobi said that FIVB encourages women’s athletes to take up this profession. There is a lot of work going and there will be more women referees in the coming few years.
In her opinion, women have the ability to bring a different aspect to the game.
Moreover, she stated, “In a men’s game they never behave like we are against them, they don’t see us as the bad guys. We can calm things down. And we are good at doing ten things at once, not just one.”
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