Last month for the first time ever Referee.pl togehter with UFFO, as a partner, organized survival camp with totally new form of execution. This event had place in Jezierzyce, close to Slupsk, in Poland and was called UFFO Survival Camp 2017. Now two weeks passed and we were interested how our campers feel and what do they think about the camp from the time perspective, since it was physically heavy and completely new with many elements.

We would like to share with you some of the thoughts:

“I think this was one of the best camps I have ever attended and I have been in many of them around Europe. I really liked that we were challenged physically and we got pushed to improve our fitness. From a refereeing perspective, the three points below have made it a great camp that helped me improve massively:
1. The use of cameras and glasses
2. Refereeing professional players
3. Having almost a one to one feedback session with Kuba and Piotr
All the above have helped me so much to spot a lot of areas that I needed to improve and the observers have worked with me day after day to make changes and get better and I felt that by the last day there has been a big improvement and felt more confident officiating top players.” – Asimina

“Things I like:
1- How busy the schedule was
2- The variety of things we’ve done; like yoga, sauna, bike trail, rule exam, video analysis etc..
3- Glasses(Cameras)
4-Warm-up/ Practice with the Players (made me feel like a player all over again 🙂
5- How patient Kuba & Piotr were with our every single question (I guess being a small group also helped)
6- Fantastic help from Polish colleagues re. Transportation and even accomodation
7- Friendly & helpful staff

Overall, I’m very pleased with both mental and physical work we’ve done. If it helps me to achieve my goals, only time will show. I would definitely consider coming back but I’d prefer camp to be a bit longer (like 10 days). Working as a small group has a huge advantage so no, I wouldnt recommend it to any other :)) because I want us to remain small 😉 “ – Hande

“I liked that food, sleeping, lectures and games were in one complex of facilities. When the agenda is tight this is a great advantage. The regeneration training was very good. Always a lot and good choice of food.

I have reached my goals. I wanted to come back to regular trainings and this was a good kick off. As well I wanted to come back to refereeing basics and I suceeded as well.

Form is fresh, interesting and entertaining. Besides the traditional forms of lectures it is great that there were practical trainings from mechanics and everyone had to prepare a individual presentation topic.” – Jan

“I liked a lot the new format of the camp. More classes is better, because you don’t have time to think about other stuff in beetwen. This is probably the main advantage. You come, they close you in the gym and for a week you do nothing else but an intense training. This is definately the best thing of this new camp. Also the direct contact with the instructors, who are also practicing and training with us. This is genial!! Survival conditions also have their advantages and I would not change anything here. We have all we need without special extravagancy.” – Bartek

We have also asked the campers if they would like to join the camp again or reccomend to friends:

I have already recommended it to 5 referees. They were all waiting for me to come back and tell them how it was and they are all very interested.

With no brainer I am going next year again, and maybe not only one week, but two!! Because one week seems to be not enought. I reccomend it widely to everyone I talked to so far, but maybe I am doing wrong, because then next year more people will want to come, hehe. joking 🙂