Gesche Schünemann

Gesche Schünemann (born 18 November 1982) is a German former wheelchair basketball player and Paralympian who was part of the team that took the silver medal in the women's wheelchair basketball at the 2008 Summer Paralympics in Beijing, and the gold medal-winning team in wheelchair basketball at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London.

After a promising basketball career was cut short by an Anterior cruciate ligament injury when she was a teenager, Schünemann took up wheelchair basketball, playing her first game in 2000. She went on to win five national championships with RSV Lahn-Dill. She began training with the national team in November 2005, and made her international debut at the European championships in 2007.

Biography Schünemann (left) with Australia's Bridie Kean (right) in Sydney in July 2012. Neither uses a wheelchair off the basketball court. Gesche Schünemann was born in Gießen on 18 November 1982. She was a swimmer and basketball player. Playing in a seconds game against TSV Grünberg, she was knocked down by , resulting in a torn anterior cruciate ligament and cartilage damage.

This ended Schünemann's basketball career for a time. She moved to Tübingen, where she studied sports management with a focus on sports marketing at the University of Tübingen. Schünemann did some coaching and played for the regional league, but her knee still bothered her and national league offers were cancelled.

Andreas Joneck, who later became the manager of RSV Lahn-Dill persuaded Schünemann to try wheelchair basketball. She began playing for the seconds on her 18th birthday. and now plays forward-center for BG Baskets Hamburg, a mixed gender team. In April 2014, she was part of the BG Baskets Hamburg team that won the International Wheelchair Basketball Federation Euro League Challenge Cup, its first International title.

In November 2005, Schünemann began training with the national team. She made her international debut at the European championships in 2007. The German national team won gold at the European championships, and went on to win it again in 2009 and 2011 before losing to the Netherlands in 2013. After the Paralympics, the team's performance was considered impressive enough for it to be named the national "Team of the Year", and it received the Silver Laurel Leaf, Germany's highest sporting honour, from German President Horst Köhler.

The German team hoped for a rematch against the United States at the 2012 Summer Paralympics in London, They defeated the Australians in front of a crowd of over 12,000 to win the gold medal, They were awarded a second Silver Laurel Leaf by President Joachim Gauck in November 2012,

After the Paralympics, Schünemann was required to rest for three months after surgery to repair the damaged tendons of the little right finger, but returned for the European Championships in 2013, which Germany lost to the Netherlands. In 2014, she won silver at the 2014 Women's World Wheelchair Basketball Championship in Toronto, where the German team was defeated by Canada in the final. The German team beat the Netherlands in the 2015 European Championships, to claim its tenth European title.

Achievements 2007: Gold European Championships (Wetzlar, Germany) 2008: Silver Paralympic Games (Beijing, China) 2011: Gold European Championships (Nazareth, Israel) 2012: Gold Paralympic Games (London, England) 2015: Gold at the European Championships (Worcester, England) 2016: Silver at the Paralympic Games (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Awards 2008: Team of the Year 2008: Silver Laurel Leaf 2012: Team of the Year 2012: Silver Laurel Leaf