2022-02-11, 03:46 AM - Word count:
Hi everyone!
A lot of you probably know me from the SHL, so it's not going to be a huge surprise that my favourite thing in life is the fastest game on earth: Hockey.
Growing up as a kid in the Netherlands, hockey probably wasn't the obvious choice for a sport to play. However, since my father played, me and my brothers pretty much got sucked into the black hole and despite a desperate (and dumb) attempt at age 13 we never succeeded in crawling out of it. We all grew up in arenas and icerinks, skating whenever we had the time. But when high school came to an end, and we had to choose between prusuing a career in hockey or focusing on our education all three of us made the smart choice. Hockey isn't very big around here, and there's not a lot of money to be earned unless we would move to a bigger hockey country. That was never a real option in my book, so I dropped my player career after juniors and joined my father's beerleague team.
Not wanting to give up on hockey completely, I turned to reffing. My brothers still played, so I was at their homegames anyway, might as well put on some skates and a striped jersey right?
A few years later, I was a linesman in the Dutch national league, and working 2-3 games every weekend. About 8 years ago, I've moved on to being a referee in the combined Belgian-Dutch topleague called the "Beneleague". I'm an IIHF referee and have worked several U18 and U20 World Cups (up to division 1B) and the sport has taken me to places like Poland, Serbia and New Zealand.
Apart from hockey, I'm also a dog and cat person, and I quite enjoy a beer while streaming Netflix or Disney+, or visiting my home away from home: Disneyland Paris.
A lot of you probably know me from the SHL, so it's not going to be a huge surprise that my favourite thing in life is the fastest game on earth: Hockey.
Growing up as a kid in the Netherlands, hockey probably wasn't the obvious choice for a sport to play. However, since my father played, me and my brothers pretty much got sucked into the black hole and despite a desperate (and dumb) attempt at age 13 we never succeeded in crawling out of it. We all grew up in arenas and icerinks, skating whenever we had the time. But when high school came to an end, and we had to choose between prusuing a career in hockey or focusing on our education all three of us made the smart choice. Hockey isn't very big around here, and there's not a lot of money to be earned unless we would move to a bigger hockey country. That was never a real option in my book, so I dropped my player career after juniors and joined my father's beerleague team.
Not wanting to give up on hockey completely, I turned to reffing. My brothers still played, so I was at their homegames anyway, might as well put on some skates and a striped jersey right?
A few years later, I was a linesman in the Dutch national league, and working 2-3 games every weekend. About 8 years ago, I've moved on to being a referee in the combined Belgian-Dutch topleague called the "Beneleague". I'm an IIHF referee and have worked several U18 and U20 World Cups (up to division 1B) and the sport has taken me to places like Poland, Serbia and New Zealand.
Apart from hockey, I'm also a dog and cat person, and I quite enjoy a beer while streaming Netflix or Disney+, or visiting my home away from home: Disneyland Paris.
<img src='https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/754742852793270428/961703664446226442/mAOBEdN.png' border='0' alt='user posted image' /><br><br><span style='font-size:7pt;line-height:100%'>Image by Sulovilen</span>
