Great development weekend for Indian Floorball earlier this month. The 1^st post-Covid live Floorball Development seminar was held in Delhi, India along with the 9^th Federation Cup, where the top 8 Indian state teams played for the championship title. The seminar focused on coaching and refereeing.

A very intense weekend for everyone involved in Indian Floorball, be it player, fan, coach or referees. The first post-Covid live Floorball Development seminar took place in Delhi, India as well as the 9^th Federation Cup in Jadhav Indoor Stadium. Floorball is actively played in 23 out of 26 states in India. The top 8 men’s and women’s teams played for the championship title with Delhi state taking home the gold medal in both cases.

• I was actually quite amazed how much Floorball has developed in India during the last year despite the influence of Covid, which was quite bad in India. We’ve had three seminars in India altogether, the first in 2008 and then the next ones in 2016 and 2018. Progress has been very good so far, says Mr. Veli Halonen, the IFF Operations Manager.
• Of course, the most important thing is to get people to play and the Indian Floorball Federation has succeeded with that with the help of the regions in India, he concludes.

This was the first seminar for the referees, which was carried out in conjunction with a tournament, which made it easier to educate and evaluate the referees in the field of play. The number of referees is increasing and the level of skills is rising.

On the coaching side the class was more about practicing and giving feedback.

• We were watching lots of games, then discussed them and gave the coaches ideas on how to improve their game and how to improve their tactical understanding of floorball. The main focus of the coaching class was on increasing speed and movement. We also went over different tactics in the defensive and offensive sections, says Mr. Jürg Kihm, the IFF Communication Manager.

Besides the coaching and refereeing classes, the IFF representatives also had some discussions of the administrative issues and mainly how Indian Floorball would move forwards on international fields. The Indian Floorball Federation is now heavily working on receiving recognition from the government’s sporting branch. Becoming more active at international level is also a very important factor for recognition.