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Cape Gazette - Monday, February 5, 2007

Lisehora Honored with Service to Sports Award

By Dave Frederick

Cape Gazette staff

This is a story of a lifelong brave, adventurous, trailblazing and furiously-focused athlete who not only never took her ball and went home, but brought her game and players along with her.

Marion Lisehora “had game” 60 years ago and she still “got game”today: a rock-hard athletic competitor, coach, administrator and publicist, fastidiously organized, just a little “off the hook,” which explains 2,200 rides and dives off a 40-foot platform into a 12-foot tank aboard a diving horse on George Hamid’s Atlantic City Steel Pier between 1953 and 1956, and at Aquafair in Miami Florida in 1957.

Last Monday night at the Chase Center along the riverfront in Wilmington, Marion was “the hammer,” the final award winner at the 58th annual Delaware Sportswriters and Broadcasters banquet at the end of a long night of too many inspirational speeches.

Lisehora stepped up to received the Herm Reitzes Award for Service to Sports. The crowd of All-State high school athletes stirred and fidgeted from three hours of sitting still. Then something magical happened.

The story of Marion touched hearts and spirits. The crowd came to its feet and applauded and meant it. Four of Marion’s adult children were there, thrilled to see Mom embrace her well-deserved moment.

“I am 75 years old” Lisehora told the large audience but somehow that didn’t seem relevant. It was the athlete and coach and community organizer who coached young kids for 27 years running the Gymkana Troupe at East Millsboro Elementary School, then later got senior women off the couch and into the game, who was so impressive.

“Focus on what you love – that makes everything else tolerable,” Lisehora said of her life as coach and competitor. “I’m not sure I deserve credit for getting older women to compete in sports. I just needed people to play with.”

Lisehora was born in Hawaii in 1931, an only child. Her mother’s name was Charlotte.

Her father, Bennett Copping, was a 1925 Naval Academy graduate who retired as a Rear Admiral. During World War II he was a squadron commander of ships at sea.

Lisehora was a “ship at sea” herself, attending 13 different schools before graduating from Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville, Md. in 1949. She captained the girls basketball team to a state title in 1948 with a win over Denton, then was back her senior year on the team that lost to Easton in the state finals.

“Catherine Cockburn was the coach. We traveled to games in cars. There were no interstates. I remember driving a ‘39 Ford. I learned so many things from her. She lived into her 90’s,” she said.

Lisehora went to the University of Maryland to major in Physical Education.

She wanted to be a teacher and coach, but bottom line she was an athlete looking for game and Maryland offered no sports for women. That’s when she discovered the gymnastics troupe Gymkana. There were trampolines, pyramids, springing and bouncing. She learned about performing and Tony Lisehora learned about her.

Tony and Marion would marry in 1953. Later he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine in 1956. He built the Georgetown Animal Hospital, which opened in 1961, with his own hands.

He also built the Selbyville Animal Hospital which he operated until shortly before his death.

Tony and Marion had five children, all athletes and accomplished professionals. There are 14 grandchildren. Tony died in 1987 when he was just 60 years old.

Marion Lisehora is at the hub of this story, but the spokes of the wheel as her life rolls on spin many chapters: mother, father, husband, children, coaching, competing. This is her hardback biography on a single page.

Marion Liseeshora honored

Highlights of that biography include Marion and Tony’s time in Atlantic City from 1953 through ’56 as part of a group known as the Diving Collegians, then later at Aquafair in Miami for 10 months of 1957. During that time there were children born and 10,800 dives from the 20- and 30-foot springboards and, of course, the diving horses.

The first time she rode the horse she was pregnant. There was no practice from a lower height. “It was an extra $100 a week, which was big money back then,” Marion said.

Once she was thrown off a split second before the horse dove down. “I held onto the reins out to the side because I know if he came down on me I’d be dead,” she said. “When the horse hit the water I climbed back on. The horse would curl his hind legs underneath and kick off the bottom just like a person.

Marion retired from teaching in 1997 after 31 years at Millsboro Elementary. During the ‘60’s and ‘70’s while running her renowned Gymkana program, she also formed the LO-DEL six-team women’s league for field hockey, softball and basketball; part of the job was arranging for fields and officials and organizing teams.

“We just got tired of traveling to Maryland and Wilmington, even as far as Long Island, to play games, so I organized a league based in Millsboro,” she said.

In 1992 Lisehora got involved in Delaware Senior Olympics. In 1997 she started a class through the Indian River School District teaching women over 50 how to play volleyball.

Numerous medals for track and field, swimming and team sports and trips to national championship venues ensued. In 2005 she was named Delaware Senior Volunteer of the Year.

In 2006 Marion oversaw three basketball teams which all qualified for the nationals, a pair of softball teams, both national qualifiers and six volleyball teams that played year round. Lisehora is always hustling women – 50 is the cutoff age – for the array of individual and team sports available through Senior Olympics. And she is constantly running down fields and gyms for her athletes to use.

Marion Lisehora is the admiral of Sussex County senior women’s sports. Her squadron continues to sail through uncharted waters, pushing and testing physical and mental limits just for the love of it all, for the love of sports, steaming forward with her crew in search of a place to play.