Thes Sport

Football in Tessenderlo began not in the town but in Hulst, one of the villages around it, where a side called Heidebloem Voetbalvereeniging Hulst was set up on 14 June 1942. The royal title arrived in 1992, so the letters grew but the ground did not.

The rebranding of 1999 explains the club as it now stands. THES is an acronym of four communes — Tessenderlo, Hulst, Engsbergen and Schoot — folded into a single membership, and three years later the club left Hulst for the centre of Tessenderlo. The old Looi Sport ground it moved into no longer exists. In 2015 the merger with VK Penarol Engsbergen brought the fourth of those villages properly inside the walls; the name and the blue and yellow survived it untouched.

The climb was slow and then it was not. Third provincial in Limburg in 1994, second provincial in 2003, first provincial in 2005. Then the club won Second National Division B in 2018 and the First National Division a season later, back-to-back titles that took it out of provincial football altogether.

Sportcentrum Tessenderlo holds 1,500.

Of the forwards who have passed through, Adriano Bertaccini is the one worth pausing on: 37 goals in 62 matches in the National Division 1 between 2021 and 2023, before he left and finished as the leading scorer in the Belgian top flight with Sint-Truiden. Kevin Oris, who had played in Belgium's first division and in Asia, was here for the promotion season of 2018–19.

The Belgian Cup has never been won. The club plays on in the national tiers it reached in 2019.