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Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993. Born
April 19th, 1948 in Tilburg Holland, Nico Toemen enjoyed a
successful career in ice hockey officiating before coming to the UK in
the late 1980s.
Toemen started playing ice hockey as a defenceman in the junior teams of
his hometown Tilburg, and later moved on to play at senior level for
Eindhoven in the Dutch First Division. He began officiating while still
a junior player and for a time, the two roles intertwined. He made his
debut as a Premier Division linesman at the age of fifteen and although
appointed to the list of international officials when still only
twenty-one, he did not finally hang up his playing skates until 1973.
Since donning the striped shirt full time, Nico Toemen officiated at 20
world championships at all levels, including Pool A Seniors twice (1977
in Austria and 1981 in Sweden) as a linesman and Pool A juniors five
times. The highlight of his career was the 1980 Winter Olympic
tournament at Lake Placid (USA), where among other appointments, he was
a linesman in the historic clash between the host nation and the USSR.
Toemen’s first experience of refereeing in Britain was at Wembley
during the 73/74 season, when he handled several of the London Lion’s
games. In 1987, when the BIHA was looking to recruit a new
Referee-in-Chief, Toemen was recommended to President Frederick Meredith
by the then senior referee, Alex McWilliam.
After accepting the role Toemen, as well as refereeing regularly in the
top two divisions of the Heineken League until February 1993, supervised
the recruitment and training of referees and linesmen. At the time of
his induction into the Hall of Fame, Nico Toemen was credited with being
responsible for Britain having as many as 250 on-ice officials at all
levels. Sixteen of those on-ice officials in 1993 were licensed to
operate in international competition.
Nico Toemen announced his retirement from active refereeing in February
1993, but continued to act as Director of Officiating into the
Superleague era before returning to Holland in 1998.
Compiled with research, provided by Martin C.Harris – April 1993. |
