GLENISS THOMEY
Date of Birth: 1952
Place of Birth: Torbay, NL
Inducted: 2003 (Female Category)
Thomey is one of the pioneers responsible for bringing female hockey into the forefront and laying a solid foundation for the sport between 1972 and 1981. Very, very talented with outstanding puck stopping skills, she emerged as the top goalie for the Newfoundland Women’s Hockey League for nine consecutive seasons. During her tenth season she played defense and was selected as the League’s Most Spirited Player.
One of the organizers of the renowned Torbay Chargers, she tended goal for the ten-year champions and was a major reason for their success. She was simply the finest goaltender within female hockey during her career and her championship record supports her great achievements. She played about 175 League games in goal and allowed less than one goal per game.
Statistics for her first four seasons show she played 72 games, allowing 76 goals for a very impressive 1.06 goals-against average.
She played in three Atlantic championships, always with a team that just wasn’t up to the overall caliber of the other Atlantic entries. It is credibly estimated that for the ten games she played in New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, her goals-against-average was 2.00.
At the conclusion of her playing days, she turned to officiating and coaching. She earned a Level 11 officials certificate and a Level 11 coaching certificate. She was certainly one of the very early female officials, maybe even the first.
An exceptionally effective goalkeeper, she performed in such a manner, on and off the ice, that she was one of the individuals whose performance set a role-model example and encouraged young girls to become involved in female hockey.
In addition to her outstanding play on the ice; Thomey took part personally in every aspect of the Torbay team and the League that often struggled for existence with items such as funds and ice-time often a large problem that had to be overcome. She was always a leader in these particularly troublesome areas and thus helped set the examples that really resulted in female hockey becoming a permanent feature of the sport within Newfoundland and Labrador.