German shepherd Hondo will have to do without the company of owner and international hockey umpire Amber Church as she packs her bags for another Olympic Games. Photo / Paul Rickard
German shepherd Hondo will have to do without the company of owner and international hockey umpire Amber Church as she packs her bags for another Olympic Games. Photo / Paul Rickard
It doesn’t matter whether it’s your first Olympics or your third, the butterflies are there, says Gisborne hockey umpire Amber Church.
“You get nervous; you get excited. It’s massive. You can never take it for granted.”
Church leaves today (Saturday) to take her place as one of 28 umpires – 14 men and 14 women – who will control the hockey games at the Paris Olympics.
The umpires and four umpire managers will gather in Cergy, northwest of Paris, from tomorrow (Sunday) to Wednesday for team building and final preparations.
Church, 36, is one of three New Zealand umpires among the 28. The others are David Tomlinson, of Palmerston North, and Gareth Greenfield, of Christchurch. Sarah Garnett, of Tauranga, is one of the umpire managers.
Church was an umpire at the 2016 Rio Olympics and the Tokyo Olympics of 2021, and was the International Hockey Federation female umpire of the year for 2021/22.
She umpired her first international game in Brazil in 2010, and her 100th (a 2-1 victory for Australia over New Zealand) in Auckland on May 15, 2022. For achieving that milestone, she received the Golden Whistle Award.
In 2022 she officiated in two big deciders – the women’s hockey world cup final in Spain and the Commonwealth Games women’s hockey final in Birmingham.
Now, here she is, on the cusp of another great adventure.
Gisborne umpire Amber Church keeps a close eye on the action in last year's Poverty Bay women's club hockey grand final. Church left yesterday for Paris where she will be officiating at the Olympic Games. Photo / Paul Rickard
You might say Church has come a long way from her childhood days, growing up in Te Karaka, 25 minutes’ drive northwest of Gisborne.
Or you could say Te Karaka is part of who she is, wherever she is.
Her parents, Graeme and Denise Church, grew up in the township together and were in a group that got around together as teens.
Graeme’s father, Gordon Church, ran the G T Church transport business, and Denise’s father, Bernie Macdonald, ran Macdonalds Carrying Co Ltd. In 1967 the businesses amalgamated and kept the Macdonalds name. After Graeme and Denise married, they carried on the family business.
Bernie Macdonald was born and raised in Gisborne but had been part of the community at Te Karaka since he and his brother Angus moved their parcel delivery business there and then bought a carrying business off A E Law in 1955. Bernie was a driving force behind the township’s volunteer fire brigade and ambulance service, Civil Defence, and the group that lobbied for a water and sewerage scheme for Te Karaka. He was a life member of the Poverty Bay-East Coast Road Transport Association and in 1981 was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for service to the community. In 2015 he was inducted posthumously into the NZ Road Transport Hall of Fame.
Through her father Graeme, Amber Church identifies as Te Aitanga a Mahaki. She rose through the hockey grades going to Māori tournaments, and in 2022 was named umpire/referee of the year at the Māori Sports Awards.
She quotes a whakatauki (Māori proverb of unknown origin) to illustrate her understanding of how she got to where she is on the hockey umpiring tree: “Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini” (Success is not the work of an individual, but the work of many).
“Hockey [in Gisborne] is a tight-knit community. I love it. And it’s something to do with being from Te Karaka ... it leads into the values I was brought up with. You know you have the support there. It’s to do with the way you were raised and the environment you have come from.
“I rely on everyone’s support and can only do what I can do because of that. Everyone plays their own little part ... not just me and my immediate family, but the extended network too – people wishing me well – every little bit has an impact.”
Church works for One School Global – a school for the Plymouth Brethren community – and is the regional director of teaching and learning for primary students in New Zealand and Argentina. She oversees everything from curriculum delivery to behaviour management to budget ... anything to do with primary school.
While based in Gisborne, Church travels three out of five days a week to visit the campuses – 17 in New Zealand and three in Argentina. In New Zealand, the farthest south is in Gore; the farthest north is in Kerikeri. She’s already been to Argentina this year.
Church started the job at the end of last November. Before that, she was the Gisborne campus principal on a 12-month contract. She’s not a member of the Brethren community, but really enjoys working for the organisation.
Church has been a teacher since 2008. She gained a Bachelor of Education degree through Massey University in Palmerston North, studying on site at first and then extramurally in Gisborne, which enabled her to go at a pace that more easily accommodated hockey umpiring.
She had her first Olympic Games appointments in 2016 during a 10-year spell at Te Hapara School, where the late Kaye Griffin had been an enthusiastically supportive principal. Church experienced similar support at Gisborne Intermediate, where she worked from 2018 to the end of 2022 and was on the leadership team.
On a more personal level, her pillars are her family, her partner and fellow teacher (at Lytton High School) Craig Christophers, and good friend and “sounding board” Jo Cumming.
And she comes back to the Poverty Bay Hockey community.
The Church family did not play hockey until Amber’s elder brother Glynn tried the code. He played rugby, but after he’d had a game of hockey he was hooked.
“Now it’s entrenched [in the family]. All day Saturday is spent at the hockey.
“Dad never played but he coached school teams. Glynn no longer plays, but his nieces and nephew do. My twin brother Andrew plays, but has taken a few seasons off to rehab a knee injury, my sister May Gooch (eldest of the four siblings) is a defender for Lytton Paikea, and I play anywhere except goalie for them.”
“I was carrying a couple of injuries at the start of the year. I wanted to prioritise my recovery and not compromise my umpiring. I decided playing would be too much when I was going to the Olympics.”
Other than that, she sees great benefit in continuing to play as well as umpire.
“As a player, I understand the rules and what they are there to achieve. As an umpire, I can put myself in the player’s position. I also think I have a better understanding of the game and the way it flows. It helps with my anticipation, as well.
“Lots of top umpires still play. Laurine Delforge, one of the best umpires in the world, plays for her national indoor team (Belgium). Some might not still play but will volunteer and coach outside umpiring.”
The three New Zealand umpires heading to Paris to officiate in the men's and women's hockey games are Gareth Greenfield (left), Gisborne's Amber Church and David Tomlinson.
Photo / Kevin Clarke, CMG Sport
Church’s introduction to umpiring had a large helping of serendipity.
Elder brother Glynn was playing for Lytton Old Boys while attending Lytton High School and training was on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Fifteen-year-old twins Amber and Andrew were also at Lytton High, and Glynn provided their ride to and from school. It meant they had to hang around in the cold waiting for training to finish . . . or do an umpiring course that was being held at the same time, indoors.
In the exam at the end of the course, Amber scored one mark more than Andrew, and that helped convince her to be open to the possibilities of umpiring.
When she missed out on representative hockey because her age group didn’t have a team, she was invited to travel with the team below, the under-13s, as their umpire.
She jumped at the chance, and at 15 stepped on to the pathway of New Zealand hockey umpiring.
Usually in hockey, men umpire men’s teams and women umpire the women, but with resources stretched in Gisborne, Church soon became accustomed to umpiring both men and women.
In Paris, for the first time at an Olympic hockey tournament, male and female umpires will officiate in either men’s or women’s matches in pool play. Once they get to cross-over games, though, it will be male umpires for the men’s games and female umpires for the women.
The video umpire input is well established in hockey, and Church says she loves it.
“My first exposure to it would have been in 2012 in its early stages. The screen was the size of a cereal box. I’ve umpired on the field with it and been a video umpire. When you’re appointed to a tournament, you do all the roles.
“It’s there to get the glaring mistakes fixed. No umpire is perfect, and we just want to get the right decision.
“Teams have one referral per game and if they are right, they get to keep it. If they’re wrong, they lose it.
“Umpires get as many referrals as they want.”
Both teams and umpires have restrictions on what they can refer to the video umpire.
Each game has two onfield umpires and although they patrol on a specified side, they can both call fouls on the other’s half. It helps them cover all angles.
Communication is important, and in tournaments and major games the umpires are “mic’d up” (with microphones and earpiece receivers).
An onfield umpire is mic’d up to the other onfield official and the video umpire. The reserve can hear what is said but can talk only at certain times.
“It takes some getting used to. You use it to enhance your communication, not as your default. Less is more over the mic. If the ball is dancing around in front of someone’s goal you don’t use it unless you need to.”
Church says she doesn’t have an end point in mind for her umpiring.
“It can be taken away from you quickly, whether that is because you’re not performing, or your body is not holding up.
