The European Gay & Lesbian Sport Federation (EGLSF) is proud to announce that its former Co-President, Conny Kempe-Schälicke has been shortlisted for the prestigious Tom Waddell award. The Federation of Gay Games (FGG) award, whose winner will be announced during this year’s global Gay Games
event in Cologne, was named after the founding father of the global LGBT sports movement and honours those who have inspired excellence and leadership through their volunteering.

Conny Kempe-Schälicke is well known in the global LGBT sports movement. Her reputation as a mover and shaker in LGBT sport spans more than twenty
years, including ten years as a Board member of EGLSF, during which she held the post of Co-President for six years.

Conny’s place in the history books would surely have been guaranteed, however, as a founder member of Seitenwechsel, the Berlin based lesbian sports
club which she helped establish in 1988 and of which she is still a member. Seitenwechsel is now the largest lesbian sports club in Europe. Indeed, as a Berliner, her sense of sporting history is enhanced by the dramatic changes that took place in her home town on November 9, 1989. She remembers:

“We were having a meeting of our sports club and the phone call came to stop what we were doing and come to the Wall. We all left the meeting immediately and went to the nearest crossing point and were amazed to see people streaming through from East Berlin.”

Conny has ensured that Berlin remains firmly on the map of LGBT sport. She is a founder member of Team Berlin, the city team which has co-ordinated and supported the participation of Berlin’s LGBT community in international sports events since Vancouver’s Gay Games in 1990. She has also contributed to the Federation of Gay Games on various committees over the years and has been a driving force in the European movement for ‘One Quadrennial Event’. If approved by the boards of the two global LGBT sports organisations, this initiative would see the Federation of Gay Games, FGG, and Gay and Lesbian International Sports Association, GLISA, co-host a world event in 2018.

Known affectionately by her football team mates as ‘Conny the Cat’ for her goalkeeping agility, Conny is respected and admired around the world for her dedication to LGBT sports participation and her commitment to challenging discrimination.

As Louise Englefield current female Co-President of the European Gay & Lesbian Sport Federation explains:

“Conny is an absolute legend! She is unassuming, yet quietly determined, a natural networker,
a strategist who’s not afraid to get her hands dirty with the day to day business of running
organisations. There is huge respect for her amongst our members throughout Europe and I
know that they will join me in wishing her good luck with this much deserved nomination.”