He is 75 years old, a retired dentist and indispensable at Amsterdam Tigers. Hiepke Boerma has been sharpening ice hockey skates for more than twenty years. “I’ll keep grinding.”
Boerma himself played in the first team of the Tigers in the sixties. After a trip to Groningen, he returned to Amsterdam in the late 1990s. “When I came back here I was dissatisfied with the sharpening of the skates. I then trained myself, because I thought I could do better.”
Boerma turned out to be the regular sharpener of the club. Captain Calvin Pohlman. “Hiepke is worth his weight in gold. He does a lot for the club. These are the people we as an association live on. Every Thursday and Saturday he is there again. Then we neatly put our skates on his workbench and he delivers tailor-made every time.”
In addition to his grinding work, Boerma does much more for the club. “If a piece of boarding is broken, we help the ice master and if someone has lost a tooth, I take a look at the teeth. I was a dentist in my previous life, so I can do that on the side.”
Whether it’s because of Boerma or not Amsterdam Tigers is having a strong season. Last Saturday, the Dordrecht Lions were defeated 7-3. The Tigers are in first place in the league after seventeen games.