Over the last five years, there has been a massive increase in the amount of resources available for officiating development in British Columbia. This process has ebbed and flowed over time but recently, there has been marked improvement. Not only have associations begun to recognize that officiating is integral to the game but they understand their own roles in improving the quality of their officials. While investment at the association level is limited by the means of their membership, the improvement has been noticeable across the board.
This new reality has led to a need to measure and quantify the success of officiating development programs. An association’s board is accountable to its members for all expenditures.
ABOUT ME
My mission is to partner with people to build themselves and their communities into something greater.
Dan Hanoomansingh
Born and raised in Vancouver, I am an experienced educator with eight years of professional experience in coaching and mentorship with a focus on officiating. Over the years, I have worked in a number of different industries in many different roles, but wherever I went, I always came back to teaching and coaching. I continue to pursue my own development and look to create environments in which others can achieve excellence and realize their goals.
As a teenager, I had the opportunity to coach community sport programs and begin my on-ice officiating career. In 2010, I had the opportunity to take on a leadership role with the Vancouver Thunderbird Minor Hockey Association. I held a variety of leadership roles, including managing the day-to-day operations of the officiating program until my departure in 2017. I am proud of the improvements we made in retention of grassroots officials, but I am most proud of the fact that the program still operates today, nearly a decade after I left the program.
In 2013, as I continued my on-ice officiating career, I took on the first of many leadership roles with BC Hockey as a clinic instructor and officiating coach. As an officiating coach, I had the opportunity to travel the province and partner with Minor Hockey Associations, while leading the officiating teams for six provincial championships. As an instructor, I took a role in BC Hockey's officiating curriculum development, leading major revisions in 2015, 2018, and 2020, and instructing the BC Hockey Summer Officiating School in 2012-2016 and 2019.
In 2017, I expanded my role with BC Hockey, taking on the role of Program Facilitator and High Performance Officiating Coach. My primary objective was to reinvigorate the Female High Performance program, increase the number of officials actively participating in the program, as well as push our best officials to success at the national and international level. I am most proud of the officials that continue to be involved in a variety of roles in the officiating program, as well as the three officials that I coached who went on to earn their IIHF licenses.
Throughout this period, I continued to officiate junior and collegiate hockey between 2011-2019, balancing my off-ice roles with my on-ice duties. My career highlights include 4 provincial championships, 1 junior championship, and 2 regional championships. I retired from officiating competitively in 2019, but continue to officiate minor hockey and I love donning the striped jersey just as much as I did back in 2004.
I completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at UBC, with a major in history and a minor in English literature. In 2018, I returned to UBC to complete my Bachelor of Education degree in Secondary Teaching with a focus on English Language Arts and Social Studies. From 2018 to 2021, I worked with the Vancouver School Board, teaching English Language Arts, English Language Learners, Social Studies, and Career Life Education. It was always my goal to become a classroom teacher and the experience did not disappoint. In 2021, I reluctantly left the classroom to take a job with Hockey Canada in the role of Manager, Officiating, overseeing Hockey Canada's officiating programming from coast to coast to coast.
In 2020, I returned to UBC yet again to complete my Master's degree at the School of Kinesiology, while also completing a certificate in High Performance Coaching and Technical Leadership. The pandemic and my role with Hockey Canada delayed things somewhat, but I was proud to complete my research, a quantitative study entitled, "Penalty Decision-Making Abilities of Elite Ice Hockey Referees", and graduated in 2024. This program, although demanding, stoked my passion to continue researching and pushing the discipline of officiating to the next level, through evidence-based practice.