LEGEND
Liesl Tesch AM PLY
An exceptional list of inductees to the BNSW Hall of Fame in 2023 is capped by the elevation of existing Hall of Famer, Liesl Tesch, to Legend status following her initial induction in 2015.
Overcoming a tragic mountain bike accident in 1988 thanks to her trademark courage and tenacity. Liesl turned into one of the best wheelchair basketball players this state has ever produced, and did so in short order.
Her ability was noticed during her rehabilitation when one of her physiotherapists noticed how skilled she was at shooting with a foam basketball and perspex backboard.
In just two years, she was named to the New South Wales team and then the national team in 1990, playing in that year’s World Championships. She followed that up with the first of an astounding five Paralympic appearances with the Gliders starting with the 1992 Barcelona Games. She was the vice-captain of the silver medal winning Australian team at Sydney 2000 and the captain in Athens in 2004, also coming home with silver. Liesl kept her form going and won a bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics. In total she won three Paralympic medals in Wheelchair Basketball coupled with being named in the All-Star Five at the 1994 Gold Cup and Most Valuable Player at the 1998 Gold Cup.
Such was her remarkable talent and will to win, she caught the eye of several professional men’s teams in Europe and would play five years on the continent, becoming the first woman in the world to play wheelchair basketball professionally with stints in Spain, Italy and France. Off the court, she established the women’s wheelchair basketball teams in Spain, Italy and France and initiated the women’s first All-Star Game.
After spending considerable time traveling in developing nations conducting wheelchair basketball training camps, Liesl co-founded Sport Matters, an international aid and development organisation using sport to empower individuals and change communities.
She retired from the national team in 2011 to focus on another sport – sailing – at the 2012 London Paralympic Games and showed what an incredible athlete she was with a gold medal triumph in the Mixed Two Person Sailing discipline, repeating as Paralympic Champion in Rio 2016.
Appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2014 Australia Day Honours List, added to Basketball Australia’s Hall of Fame in 2016, and inducted into the New South Wales Hall of Champions in 2022, Liesl Tesch is an individual whose devotion to the promotion and facilitation of sport for people with disabilities is to be admired and applauded.
Liesl was elected as the Member for Gosford in the NSW Parliament in 2017 and is the co-chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Basketball and also the Parliamentary Friends of Olympic and Paralympic Sport. She recently returned from Ghana as part of a delegation of parliamentarians with disabilities – an effort to get more people with disabilities involved in parliamentary recognition – and is planning to host a game of wheelchair basketball for over 600 delegates from around the Commonwealth next November in Sydney.
For everything she accomplished in wheelchair basketball during an extraordinary career, the elevation of Liesl Tesch to Legend status in the BNSW Hall of Fame is an easy decision.
Basketball NSW Hall of Fame Dinner
Date: Saturday, November 25th, Novotel Northbeach Wollongong
Time: 6:30pm for a 7:00pm start
Dress: Cocktail
Tickets: CLICK HERE to Purchase. Tickets are from $165 per person or $1550 per table of ten. Includes a three-course dinner, a 3-hour beverage package and a commemorative HoF booklet.