Wairarapa umpire is bound for New Delhi

Veteran Wairarapa table tennis umpire Valerie Scarr has got the call up and will be one of two Kiwi refs adjudicating at next year's Commonwealth Games in Delhi.
The stalwart Wairarapa table tennis player made the grade following a rigorous evaluation and examination procedure after her name was put forward to the International Table Tennis Federation by the New Zealand Table Tennis Association.
Mrs Scarr is now one of only three "Blue Badge" New Zealand umpires and is just the second women in the country to have been endorsed with the top level international honour.
A former Top 10 national veterans player Mrs Scarr started paddling as a teenager and reckons her table tennis career has been an "up and down" affair ever since.
Over the past two years she's travelled the world as an umpire - adjudicating tournaments in Croatia, South Africa, England and Los Vegas.
So far her dealings with the elite players (most of whom are Chinese, with growing depth from Europe and other Asian nations) have been unsullied by controversy, something she puts down to the sense of fair play employed by these top level athletes.
"I haven't had any major crises - when you get up to that standard the players know the rules and are honest and fair," she said.
Mrs Scarr will join Christchurch umpire Alan Moore at the 2010 Games and reckons she's both "excited and nervous" about the prospect of refereeing the biggest tournament of her life.
"It will be a lot more pressure because you're going to have television and scoring machines and you daren't make a mistake."
However, she said the chance to umpire with the world's best will be an invaluable experience.
At the end of it all (and in line with her usual post-tournament travel policy) Mrs Scarr plans to ping-pong around the subcontinent for a few weeks.