Lifetime Membership Honours for Sarah Wilson and Martin Madden

We are delighted to announce the award of Lifetime Membership to Scottish Hockey for both Sarah Wilson and Martin Madden in honour of their outstanding contributions to umpiring both within Scottish Hockey and hockey, in general, over a number of years.

Back in 2016, it was announced that both Sarah and Martin had been appointed to umpire bronze medal matches at the Rio Olympics. Sarah Wilson umpired the match between Germany and New Zealand, while Martin Madden umpired the contest between Netherlands and Germany.

That year, following her performance at the Olympic Games, the Umpiring Committee approved Sarah’s promotion to the World Panel List. The FIH said that over the previous two years Sarah had shown a consistently improving level of performance at tournaments, which shows how hard she had worked to achieve the necessary standard of umpiring to be promoted to the World Panel.

Sarah Wilson an umpire at the Rio Olympic bronze medal match

Meanwhile, also that year, Martin Madden became the 39th man to receive a FIH Golden Whistle for umpiring 100 senior international matches, with The Netherlands v India at the Olympics being his 100th match umpiring at this level.

In September 2017, Sarah Wilson was the Scottish Women in Sport ‘Official of the Year’ and was added to the FiH Road to Tokyo list.

Later that year, both Sarah and Martin officiated the women’s and men’s World League finals respectively. Madden was umpire for the final of the men’s World League in India between Australia and Argentina and Wilson was the umpire for the women’s World League final between the Netherlands and New Zealand, in Auckland.

Fast forward to September 2019 when both Sarah Wilson and Martin Madden had cause for celebration as they were both appointed to umpire at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.

Martin Madden wins Men’s Official of the Year at the Scottish Hockey Awards 2019 – photo by Mark Pugh

Both of their careers to-date have culminated in the Tokyo Olympics. Sarah’s experience at the event ultimately peaked when she umpired the Women’s Gold medal final between The Netherlands and Argentina. Martin, meanwhile, umpired matches between New Zealand and India, Argentina and Spain, Argentina and New Zealand, Russia and Germany, Japan and Spain, and Spain and New Zealand.

Martin Shepherdson, Chairman of Scottish Hockey said, “We are extremely proud that both Sarah and Martin have performed at the absolute top level of umpiring for so long. By awarding them with Lifetime Membership of Scottish Hockey, the highest honour that Scottish Hockey can give, we wish to acknowledge and congratulate them on their achievements and wish them continued success in the future”.

In a recent announcement, the FIH has stated that Sarah Wilson will officiate at the Hockey Women’s World Cup, to be held 1 – 17 July 2022 in Terrassa, Spain and Amstelveen, Netherlands, and Martin Madden will officiate at the Hockey Men’s World Cup, to be held 13 – 29 Jan 2023 in Bhubaneswar and Rourkela in India.

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