Gradina Tesanj

Local men in Tešanj put a basketball side together to give the town a team of its own, and for years Gradina existed exactly where that kind of project usually lives: mid-table finishes, a junior side quietly finishing second in its group, a run at promotion in 2014 that ended against Royal/Bosna Sarajevo. The club played under the name Koteks-Gradina before settling into its current identity, and it built its sense of itself less on cups than on people who stayed with it — Goran Pantelejić came up through every youth selection Gradina had and later returned to coach there, the sort of loop a small-town club depends on more than a trophy cabinet.

Šefket Turalić took over as President of the Assembly in 2014, steering the club through the years when the A2 Liga Sjever was the ceiling: fourth in 2018/2019, then second the following season, close enough to promotion to feel it without reaching it.

That changed in 2025/2026, when Gradina won the A1 Liga FBiH outright and went up to the Premijer Liga BiH, the top tier of Bosnian basketball. For a club that had spent its history in the regional leagues below, it was described locally as a historical success, and it changes what a home game at the Tešanj Sports Hall now means. The players wear red and white, the colours already confirmed on the shirt before the promotion made them worth watching. What Gradina has never had is a run of its own at the top level — it will find out this season whether the side built on players like Pantelejić can hold its place among the clubs it used to watch from below.