For­mer na­tion­al women's team hock­ey duo, Reyah Richard­son and Ayan­na Mc Clean will be fly­ing this coun­try's flag high at next year's Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan af­ter be­ing hand­ed Fed­er­a­tion In­ter­na­tion­al Hock­ey (FIH) ap­point­ments.

When the FIH re­vealed the list of of­fi­cials ap­point­ed for the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, Richard­son was named as one of the 14 Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cials, and on­ly one of three from the Pan Amer­i­can re­gion along with Ar­gen­tine Adri­an Del­la Mat­tia, and USA's Rene Zelkin.

Mc Clean, who of­fi­ci­at­ed at the 2018 Com­mon­wealth Games fi­nal in Gold Coast Aus­tralia and has of­fi­ci­at­ed in the FIH World League this sea­son was one of 14 um­pires se­lect­ed for the women's hock­ey com­pe­ti­tion, and one of four from the Pan Amer­i­can re­gion,and on­ly the sec­ond from this coun­try be­hind Roger St Rose who of­fi­ci­at­ed at the 1996 At­lanta Olympics.

The three oth­er um­pires from the Pan Amer­i­can zone se­lect­ed were Ar­gen­tines', Car­oli­na De La Fuente and Irene Pre­sen­qui, and USA's Mag­gie Gid­dens

In ac­cor­dance with the agreed guide­lines and process­es of FIH, all ap­point­ed Of­fi­cials come from the FIH Pro League pan­els as these are the top-rat­ed Of­fi­cials.

While per­for­mance was the pri­ma­ry se­lec­tion cri­te­ria, the Of­fi­cials Com­mit­tee al­so looked, as a sec­ondary con­sid­er­a­tion, at the ge­o­graph­ic spread of the of­fi­cials to en­sure that all con­ti­nents are rep­re­sent­ed.

As a fur­ther demon­stra­tion of FIH’s “Equal­ly Amaz­ing” pol­i­cy, the Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cials will work across both gen­ders’ match­es. Fur­ther­more, while on field Um­pires will be the same gen­der as the match, Video Um­pires may be the oth­er gen­der as has been suc­cess­ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed dur­ing the FIH Pro League this year.

The 2020 Olympic hock­ey tour­na­ments will be staged in Japan’s cap­i­tal city from 25 Ju­ly to 7 Au­gust next year.