Internationally acclaimed Zimbabwean hockey administrator and technical official Sarah Bennett has been granted the prestigious International Hockey Federation (FIH) Development Champions Award at the 2024 FIH Congress in Muscat, Oman.
The 49th FIH Statutory Congress in Oman also took the opportunity to announce and recognise the winners of the FIH Hockey Stars Awards during the gala night on Friday.
Bennett, who is a stalwart of hockey development in Zimbabwe, is African Hockey Federation (AfHF) vice president and AfHF development committee chair while she has been Hockey Association of Zimbabwe (HAZ) secretary general since 2004.
AfHF led in congratulating the Zimbabwean technical official on the global recognition.
“Congratulations to the AfHF vice president and AfHF Development Committee chair Sarah Bennett (ZIM) for being granted the prestigious FIH Development Champions Award at the 2024 FIH Congress being held in Muscat, Oman,” they wrote on the social media platforms,
The former Annual National Sports Awards (ANSA) technical official of the year, holds a degree in sports psychology.
She was a member of the Zimbabwe women’s national team from 2001–2007 after which she retired to pursue her umpiring career as an FIH international umpire and is an FIH technical official.
The country’s high profile FIH technical official, Bennett recently took part at the second successive Olympic Games in Paris after also officiating at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
Bennett was the only female technical official from Africa at the Paris Olympics.
The Zimbabwean was part of an AfHF Forum which took place last Thursday, attended by 24 national associations to discuss various African hockey matters on the sidelines of the 2024 FIH Congress in Muscat.
In the FIH Hockey Stars Awards Yibbi Jansen (Netherlands) and Harmanpreet Singh (India) were awarded the FIH Players of the year 2024 for women and men categories respectively.
Ye Jiao of China (women) and PR Sreejesh of India (men) won the FIH Goalkeepers of the Year awards; and the awards for FIH Rising Stars went to Zoe Díaz (women) of Argentina and Sufyan Khan (men) of Pakistan.
For the second year in a row China women’s head coach Alyson Annan (Australia) has been awarded the FIH Coach of the Year award in the women’s category, while Jeroen Delmee (Netherlands) wins the FIH Coach of the Year award in the men’s category.
Sarah Wilson of Scotland and Steve Rogers of Australia won the FIH Umpire of the Year award in the women's and men's categories respectively.