Heath and Ashlein Lyttle are Mid Canterbury Netball’s father-and-daughter umpiring duo. Photo Erin TaskerFor a 13-year-old to be umpiring at a premier grade level in netball is a pretty impressive feat.

Ashlein Lyttle is doing just that and loving every minute of it, but there is something else that made what she is doing even more special, and that is the fact she is able to umpire those games alongside her dad Heath.

Ashlein only started umpiring last season but quickly found her feet and recently obtained her centre badge meaning she can now umpire in Mid Canterbury Netball’s Thursday night premier grades.

Also on the umpiring roster for the premier grades is Heath, who has been umpiring for the past three seasons after being talked into it by Wendy Hopwood, a stalwart of Mid Canterbury Netball umpiring.

He was a parent supporting Ashlein on the sideline at the time and with a background of softball officiating, which he still undertakes in the summer, he decided to give netball umpiring a go too and has not looked back since.

In fact, in a way, he wished he’d taken it up sooner. He’d have loved to have one day made it as far as umpiring a team like the Silver Ferns, but knew he’d probably started a bit late in life to make it that far.

So he is happy to just make it as far as he could, umpiring to the best of his ability at a local level and taking up tournament opportunities when they arose.

At Queen’s Birthday weekend he was in Nelson with the Mid Canterbury Under-15 netball teams umpiring at the Mainland under-15 tournament.

Ashlein was also there, but as a player, and while she loved umpiring it was playing where she really hoped her future lay.

She is part of the Hampstead C netball team which recently earned promotion from Saturday netball into the Thursday night premier two grade.

“My dream is still to be a Silver Fern, but if that didn’t turn out I would like to be an umpire,” Ashlein said.

When you were refereeing or umpiring any sport, you needed to be tough, and Heath had no doubt his daughter would be up to the challenge when she decided she wanted to give it a go.

Ashlein said the hardest part now that she was moving up through the grades was dealing with people who were a lot older than her, and the fact that not everyone agreed with every call an umpire made.

“I just try not to let it get to me too much because when I do I start questioning myself,” Ashlein said. The first game the Lyttles umpired together was a Saturday game and they didn’t really get time to think about who was on the other side of the court, they were both just focused on the job at hand, which is just the way it should be.

By Erin Tasker © The Ashburton Guardian - 7 June 2019