T&T Fed­er­a­tion In­ter­na­tion­al Hock­ey um­pire Ayan­na Mc Clean of Ven­ture Hock­ey Club was vot­ed on Tues­day as the FIH Women’s Um­pire of the Year as se­lect­ed by the FIH Um­pir­ing Com­mit­tee.

The Bel­mont-born Mc Clean for­mer­ly of South East Port-of-Spain Sec­ondary School and Hof­s­tra Uni­ver­si­ty who has been um­pir­ing at the high­est lev­el for the past 16 years has al­ready of­fi­ci­at­ed in more than 230 in­ter­na­tion­al match­es, in­clud­ing at the last Olympics in Tokyo and at the 2022 FIH Hock­ey Women’s World Cup.

The high­est-ranked fe­male um­pire from the Caribbean, the USA-based Mc Clean will al­so be seen at the up­com­ing Olympic Games Paris 2024.

“I am sim­ply speech­less. I am hum­bled for this recog­ni­tion by FIH and I will make sure to keep do­ing my best,” ex­claimed Ayan­na when she came to know that she has been award­ed this.

She added, “It’s tru­ly an ho­n­our to re­ceived this award. It was def­i­nite­ly a shock but at the same time I have worked ex­treme­ly very hard through­out my en­tire ca­reer and this is not some­thing that was hon­est­ly ever on my radar.

“So to re­ceive this award not on­ly I would say not on­ly based on what hap­pened through­out the year but what hap­pened through­out my en­tire ca­reer I have had lots of op­por­tu­ni­ties and con­tin­ued to work hard through those and this is just an amaz­ing ac­com­plish­ment and achieve­ment to even think I would be con­sid­ered and to come out as the 2023 FIH Fe­male Um­pire of the Year it is a very much re­ward­ing ex­pe­ri­ence be­ing ac­knowl­edged for the hard work put in over my ca­reer.”

“I have re­ceived lots of mes­sages of con­grat­u­la­tions from across the world and while there might be hic­cups in your um­pir­ing ca­reer there are peo­ple that are al­ways cheer­ing for you and I want to thank those peo­ple who have been my biggest cheer lead­ers one be­ing my moth­er, and two my club and then all my sup­port­ing friends, fam­i­ly and not to for­get um­pire Susie Gomes who have all played apart in my ca­reer thus far, and not for­get­ting as well my men­tor who is a for­mer FIH hock­ey um­pire at the Olympics in Min­ka Wool­ley of Aus­tralia.

The award is al­so a chance to show that we um­pires are al­so a part of the ath­let­ic body, as some­times we tend to get for­got­ten and for young ath­letes who may not be think­ing about it, it is in fact an op­por­tu­ni­ty as a pro­fes­sion as um­pir­ing has tak­en me way past way past what I could have ever ex­pect­ed in see­ing dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents, get­ting schol­ar­ships, um­pir­ing at the NCAA lev­el and I hope more is to come with the Paris Olympics to come next year.”

Com­ment­ing on the achieve­ment by Mc Clean, Jen­nifer Lan­der, Pres­i­dent of the Ven­tures Hock­ey Club and T&THB Sec­ond Vice-Pres­i­dent said the club was very hap­py by her suc­cess on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage as an um­pire.

Lan­der added, “Once again Ayan­na has made up proud. As a mem­ber of Ven­tures she has grown from play­er to cap­tain to um­pire at the na­tion­al lev­el and then the re­gion­al, and now the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el.

“We are re­al­ly proud of her achieve­ment and we at Ven­tures say heart­felt con­grat­u­la­tions,’ stat­ed Lan­der.

A for­mer de­fend­er for the T&T women’s na­tion­al field hock­ey teams, she is the sec­ond per­son from the Caribbean to be qual­i­fied to um­pire at a World Cup or Olympic tour­na­ment, af­ter for­mer T&T Hock­ey Board Pres­i­dent Roger St Rose, and the first woman

She al­so comes from a sport­ing fam­i­ly with her moth­er, Cher­ril Mc Clean, be­ing the first woman from T&T to be­come an FIH Grade One um­pire.

While still play­ing at Hof­s­tra, Mc Clean be­came an FIH cer­ti­fied um­pire with her first in­ter­na­tion­al ap­point­ment be­ing at the 2005 Ju­nior Pan Amer­i­can Games in Puer­to Ri­co.

She went on to um­pire at the 2007 Pan Amer­i­can Games, the 2009 Pan Amer­i­can Cup and the 2010 Pan Amer­i­can Youth Cham­pi­onships, and in 2010 was ap­point­ed as a neu­tral um­pire for the in­au­gur­al Youth Olympic Games in Sin­ga­pore.

At the 2013 Pan Amer­i­can Cup Mc Clean was ho­n­oured for um­pir­ing her 50th in­ter­na­tion­al match, and up­on re­ceiv­ing her FIH Grade One in 2013, she be­came the high­est-ranked women’s um­pire from the Caribbean, and has been so since.

In the run-up to the Olympic Games of 2016 she was heav­i­ly in­volved in um­pir­ing Olympic Qual­i­fi­ca­tion tour­na­ments, in­clud­ing the 2015 Hock­ey World League semi­fi­nals in Va­len­cia, Spain, the 2015 Hock­ey World League Fi­nal in Rosario, Ar­genti­na, and the 2015 Pan Amer­i­can Games in Toron­to, Cana­da.

In 2017 it was an­nounced that Mc­Clean was ap­point­ed to um­pire at the 2018 Hock­ey World Cup in Lon­don,

Mc Clean start­ed play­ing hock­ey when she was 11 and cap­tained both her school team at South-East Port-of-Spain and the Un­der-21 Ven­tures team.

She then re­ceived an ath­let­ic (hock­ey) schol­ar­ship to at­tend Hof­s­tra Uni­ver­si­ty in Long Is­land, New York in 2004, and lat­er cap­tained the hock­ey team at Hof­s­tra as well.

On the in­ter­na­tion­al play­ing lev­el, she was a mem­ber of the Un­der-21 train­ing squad, and lat­er rep­re­sent­ed T&T at the 2003 Pan Amer­i­can Games in San­to Domin­go.