Wieseck U19

Gymnastics came first. The men who set up a Turnverein in the village of Wieseck in 1862 were drilling on apparatus, not chasing a ball. Wieseck itself is no longer a village but a district of Gießen, and the club carries both names — Turn- und Sportgemeinschaft Gießen-Wieseck.

The twentieth century pulled it apart twice. A split in 1906 produced a second gymnastics society, Freie Turnerschaft Wieseck, which was banned in 1933 and folded back into the parent club. Then the Allies dissolved the whole thing in 1945. What came back in 1948 was a new sports association.

The senior side plays in the Gruppenliga Gießen/Marburg, the seventh tier, having come down from the Verbandsliga Hessen Mitte in 2011/12 and again in 2014/15.

It rests on the JugendFörderzentrum, the youth centre, and on the players who passed through it. Luca Waldschmidt spent a single season at Wieseck, 2009–10, before a career that took him to Eintracht Frankfurt, Wolfsburg, 1. FC Köln and Benfica. Lara Schmidt was here in the C-Jugend in 2015–16 and went on to Werder Bremen and Borussia Dortmund. Markus Högner came through the same setup and now coaches at the club.

The trophy cabinet stays thin. No senior league title of consequence, no national or Hessen cup at youth level either — the closest was the U17 side reaching the Hessenpokal semi-finals in 2023/24.