SC Cottbus
The Cottbus sports club was a sports club in the GDR sports system . It existed from 1963 to 1992 in the then district town of Cottbus and was a sporting performance center for the southeast of the GDR.
Club development
The SC Cottbus was founded on April 19, 1963 to upgrade the previous sporting no man's land in the southeast of the GDR. The foundation was laid by the soccer section of SC activist Brieske-Senftenberg , which was incorporated into SC Cottbus at the beginning of the 1963/64 soccer season. In the founding year, the athletics and boxing sections were formed, cycling was added in 1969 and the gymnastics section in 1975. With the exception of the football section, which was spun off again in 1966 and continued to exist as BSG Energie Cottbus , the sports club produced a number of top athletes who not only won numerous GDR championship titles, but also achieved considerable international success with Olympic and world championship victories . In the course of social conditions after the end of the GDR, SC Cottbus dissolved in 1992 into the following newly founded sports clubs:
- Boxing club Cottbus
- Lusatian handball club Cottbus
- Athletics Club Cottbus
- Cottbus cycling club
- Sports club Cottbus gymnastics
Boxing
The Cottbus boxers won the first championships for the new sports club. Werner Kirsch and Klaus Radnick were GDR champions as early as 1963 , Werner Kirsch was an annual master until 1966. By 1988 the boxers of SC Cottbus had a total of 16 GDR championship titles. At the international level, Marco Rudolph was successful as Junior European Champion in 1987 and World Champion in 1991.
athletics
Among the athletes, women in particular were very successful. They include the high jumper Rosemarie Ackermann and Gunhild Hoffmeister . Rosemarie Ackermann became a world record holder in 1974, was Olympic champion in 1976 and European champion in 1974. The middle-distance runner Gunhild Hoffmeister was also a European champion in 1974, winning the 1972 Olympic silver and 1976 bronze medal. Both together won a total of 20 GDR championship titles. With Karin Roßley , 400 m hurdles, and the discus thrower Gabi Reinsch , SC Cottbus had two other world record holders in its ranks.
Cycling
The most successful section of SC Cottbus were the cyclists, who won 21 world championship titles and three Olympic gold medals. The most successful cyclists included Lutz Heßlich (4 × world champion, 2 × Olympic champion), Lothar Thoms (4 × world champion, 1 × Olympic champion), Volker Winkler (4 × world champion), Jens Glücklich (4 × world champion), Bernd Drogan (3 × World champion) and Hans-Joachim Hartnick (1 × world champion, winner of the international peace drive 1976). From this section, the RSC Cottbus was created in 1992 .
Soccer
The football section suffered from unfavorable conditions from the start. The football players of the SC activist Brieske-Senftenberg , who were relocated from Senftenberg , 40 kilometers away , had to lament not only the loss of the league membership due to relegation from the GDR league in the previous season, but also the end of the decades-long tradition as a football club of the Lusatian lignite miners. With Manfred Kupferschmied , who moved to SC Karl-Marx-Stadt, and Lothar Marotzke, Harry Matschak and Heinz Scholz, who continued to play in Senftenberg with the BSG activist Brieske-Ost, four previous regular players did not make the move to Cottbus.
The other players, including the former national players Heinz Lemanczyk and Heinz Krüger , played their first GDR league game against Dynamo Schwerin on August 18, 1963 in the Cottbus stadium of the railway workers , which ended 1-1. Since there were no other high-class football teams in the sports club's catchment area and the change from other league teams to Cottbus did not take place, the SC was largely dependent on young players to expand and refresh its squad. Only with Reinhard Lauck (later 33-time national player at 1. FC Union Berlin) and junior national player Frank-Rainer Withulz (later 149 league games for FC Vorwärts Berlin / Frankfurt) above-average players were developed at SC Cottbus. The goal of developing a new top team for the region in Cottbus was not achieved.
In the first season of 1963/64 they landed behind local rivals ASG Vorwärts Cottbus on rank 4, in 1965 SC Cottbus missed promotion to the league with seven points behind Chemie Halle. After completion of the first half series of the 1965/66 season, the sports club team came again behind forward Cottbus. The army footballers were at the top, the SC Cottbus was five points behind 3. The last game of the first round on December 12, 1965 against local rivals activist Black Pump (2: 1) was also the last game of a football team of SC Cottbus.
At the end of 1965, the GDR Football Association decided to separate the football sections from the sports clubs and to convert the strongest teams into football clubs. Since the SC Cottbus was not one of the preferred teams, its football section was converted into a company sports community, which appeared from January 31, 1966 under the name Energie Cottbus .