BC Sport Kassel
The 1st Cassel Ball Game Club "Sport" , mostly abbreviated as BC Sport Kassel , is a football club with around 380 members from the north Hessian city of Kassel . Founded in 1894, it is the city's oldest football club still in existence. The first heyday of the "Sportians" were the 1920s, when the team qualified three times for the final round of the West German Championship. In the 1930s and 1940s, BC Sport belonged to the Gauliga Hessen and just barely missed the German championship finals in 1941. After the Second World War, the team did not play a role in national football for a long time, until they competed in the amateur league of Hesse from 1974 to 1976 and thus again in a higher class. This was followed by more than ten years on the fourth level, the Landesliga Hessen . Since 1986 the first team of BC Sport Kassel has also played in the top leagues in the Kassel region.
history
On April 15, 1894, some high school students founded the Cassel football club “Sport” in the “ Zur Insel Helgoland ” excursion restaurant on the Losse . In the early years "Sport" was a noble club that placed a lot of emphasis on etiquette and higher education. The choice of name was also deliberately and provocatively aimed at differentiating it from gymnasts who viewed sport as a British quirk. After the death of the two older Kassel football clubs ECFC and Hassia , the addition "1." was untruthfully adopted. With the establishment of further departments, it was decided later to change the name from "Football Club" to "Ball Game Club".
The first few years were quiet due to the lack of regular gaming operations, and it was only in the years after the founding of the German Football Association that the clubs' range of action gradually expanded beyond the city limits after the turn of the century. BC Sport did not have any national successes until the First World War, but for the 20th anniversary of the club in 1914, six senior and one senior team were employed.
Even during the First World War, there were indications that BC Sport would gradually take over the leading role of Casseler FV (later SV Kurhessen ) in the lively local football scene: in 1916/17 they became district champions and in the post-war years as the regular game operation in the leagues of the West German game association , to which the Kassel clubs belonged at the time, had gotten going again, achieved the breakthrough in the 1920/21 round. Only defeated by SV 06 Rothenditmold in the local district class , a 4-1 victory over Lahnkreismeister VfB 05 Marburg on March 13, 1921 won the Gaume Championship and thus made it to the final round of the West German Championship. Here the blue-whites met the well-known opponents Duisburger SpV , Kölner BC , Dortmunder SC 95 and Preußen Münster and were ultimately without a chance, but reached BC Sport with "a seldom beautiful and eager game and heroic fight" , like the trade journal "Fußball" on the occasion of the 1: 2 home defeat in front of 5,000 spectators attested, after winning points against Münster and Dortmund in fourth place. After SV Kurhessen and CSC 03 had taken over the leadership role again in the meantime, the "Sportians" won two more places in the finals for the "West German", but failed again due to the overpowering clubs of the Rhine and dysentery. The club's first era of success soon came to an end, after internal disputes the team broke up. Following the round of 1928/29, the blue-whites even had to relegate from the top division for the first time, but returned after only one season. At the end of the 1930/31 season, the team around the selected players Sauerbier and Sander was tied with Borussia Fulda in first place, but lost 5-0 in the playoff for the championship.
In 1932, BC Sport failed to qualify for the single-track district league, but as a second division champion, after the political upheaval and the associated league reform, the leap into the new Gauliga Hessen succeeded . In the new upper house, the team was able to hold on with difficulty in the first game year 1933/34 , but already rose after the round of 1934/35 as the bottom of the table. After the former Frankfurt Bernhard Kellerhoff had taken over the training, the sporting success came back and for the season 1937/38 the team returned to captain Walter Wiesendorf in the Gauliga. In 1939 only escaped relegation due to the division of the league due to the war, the BC Sport played impressively in the war years. Not least with the help of a number of well-known guest players, the relay championship succeeded in 1940/41 against local rivals CSC 03 , but in the fight for the Gaume championship and thus the first entry into the German championship finals, the "Sportians" failed again at Borussia Fulda: 4000 spectators The "Hafenbrücke" celebrated a 2-1 victory in the first leg, but in the second leg at the "Johannisau" BC Sport came under the wheels 3: 8. Until the end of the war there were no further successes; from October 1943, further gaming was only possible in a war game community with the neighbor BV Kassel 06 .
After the end of the war and the associated dissolution of the clubs, the successor to BC Sport , BV 06 and Tuspo Waldau was the SG Blau-Weiß Kassel , which initially had sporting difficulties, because after the successful qualification for the Kurhessen League in 1946, after the departure of some top performers, they missed out In 1947 - now again under the old club name - the qualification for the Landesliga Hessen, played only third class for the first time in the club's history and threatened to sink into mediocrity. After the long-time captain Walter Wiesendorf took over the training, the turning point was achieved in 1949 with the qualification for the district class (the later 2nd amateur league Hessen). The jump into the Hessian upper house was barely denied the blue-whites in 1954, three years later, led by the player-coach "Toni" Hellwig, who had returned from KSV Hessen, the "Sportians" not only won the championship with 107 goals scored, but sat down also in the promotion round and rose after a 3-2 victory in the playoff over the SKG Sprendlingen in the highest Hessian league.
The joy lasted only for a short time, however, because not only the immediate relegation after the 1957/58 season from the 1st amateur league Hessen was a setback for the traditional North Hessian club: after more than five decades, they also had to leave the area at the port bridge, one Road expansion fell victim. Another sporting low point followed in 1960 with the descent to the A-Class. But it also marked the beginning of a new era, because in addition to moving into new club premises, a new, strong team was created at BC Sport almost exclusively from young talent, which returned to the 2nd amateur league in 1960/61. Then you moved four times in a row in the promotion round, but failed just as regularly. When the group leagues were introduced in Hesse in 1965 as the new fourth level below the Hesse League, the blue-whites were regularly in the top half of the table in the years that followed, but they didn't get up to the top amateur division until the ninth attempt in 1974.
1974 until today
For two years, BC Sport was able to compete with well-known competitors and second division aspirants such as FSV Frankfurt , Hessen Kassel , VfR Bürstadt and the upstart KSV Baunatal , who once again attracted up to 3,000 spectators to Scharnhorststrasse. In 1976 the time in the amateur upper house ended again, and to this day the traditional Kassel club has not managed to return to the Hessen League. After all, until 1986, despite the dramatic drop in audience numbers, the group league north, which was called the Landesliga Nord from 1978 onwards, even played for promotion between 1977 and 1980. But then the relegation to the district league could no longer be prevented, and precisely in the previous year of the 100th anniversary, 1993, followed another descent into the district league and thus the lowest point in the club's history. The further crash could be prevented, as early as 1995 one belonged again to the district upper league Kassel.
In 2013/14 BC Sport played in the sixth class association league . From there, he was further relegated to the Kassel regional league from the 2015/2016 season.
Venue
In the vicinity of today's “Sport” square at the “Kreisel” traffic junction, football was already being played before BC Sport was founded. The first soccer games in Kassel were played in 1892 on what was then known as the “Siechenhof”. The first members of the club came - like those of the neighbor FC Hassia (later SV Kurhessen ) - from the lower Neustadt, but before the turn of the century they were based on the Bettenhäuser Forst along with other clubs . The first German championship final would have been played on this course in 1903 if the “Sportians” had not had their usage permit withdrawn a few days before the final. In 1906 BC Sport returned to the forest and built the sports field "Hafenbrücke" on Scharnhorststraße, which remained the home of the club until 1958. Due to the construction of a road extension, it was temporarily necessary to switch to the Hessenkampfbahn , in 1960 a newly built area was moved to on Scharnhorststrasse, where BC Sport still plays its home games today.
literature
- Hardy Greens : Legendary football clubs. Hesse. Between FC Alsbach, Eintracht Frankfurt and Tuspo Ziegenhain. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-89784-244-0 , pages 48-51.