Mgr. Ludmila Ordnungová

* 1934

  • The coach came to me: 'Hey, what are you doing next Saturday?' - 'I don't think I have any plans.' - 'Now you do. You're going to play basketball. We are going to Františkovy Lázně. We only have four players, and we have to have five.' - 'How can I play basketball? I have never played it.' - 'But you play volleyball. You jump, you run on the court, and you know what a balloon is. Arrive at the upper station at two o'clock. Put something on your feet. We'll give you a jersey and explain the rules on the way.' So I came to the upper station. They told me on the train: 'It's nothing. There are five of you and five of them. There is a basket on the field, you attack the opposite basket. You have to dribble; that's like banging the ball on the ground. And when you're alone under the basket, shoot.' So I thought to myself, God, that's easy. Why couldn't I do it? We arrived in Františkovy Lázně. We played, someone fouled us, and there was a free throw. And because the player did not hit the basket, the balloon fell into my hands. Knowing that 'when you're alone under the basket - shoot!' I thought: shoot! I shot and realized at that moment that I was shooting at my own basket. It was so horrible, so humiliating. I was thinking, what should I do? The ball was thrown off bounds. I took it, and in a fit of rage, I dribbled across the field and scored in the right basket on the other side. The result was our victory. We won 8:4. And I was the top scorer because I scored on both sides."

  • "We won that. But in the finals, when we played Russia and America, there was an awkward moment. An error occurred at the recording desk. Luboš Dobrý took a time-out and made a substitution. He put player number 12, Jarka Dubská, on the field. She hadn't played yet during this game. She stepped on the court, the referee threw the ball, and the judge from the table interrupted the game. He said that player 12 had already been disqualified for four fouls and came on again, that it was a technical foul, so the player had to leave the field. We were saying, how is that possible when she wasn't playing before, so it couldn't be true. Mister Jones, chairman of the entire basketball federation, was quirky. He didn't look like a basketball player. Mister Jones was short and fat. He was always smoking cigars, sitting by the benches with the players at scorer's table level, and smoking a cigar. He was allowed to do it during the match, or perhaps he allowed it himself. The referee said the player was not allowed to play, and we got a technical foul. They threw three free throws. Luboš Dobrý went to Jones and told him that our player didn't play. Mister Jones came to the table and said, 'Show me the record!' The judge said he would not show it. Jones told him: 'This is the World Cup!' But the judge sat on the record sheet because he knew there was a mistake and didn't want to admit it. He took out the record sheet, and it turned out he had made a mistake. It was the Russian player 12 that was fouled. And she was already on the bench. They argued. The break was quite long. They said, let's finish the match, and we can file a protest after. But it has to be subsidized by $100. Our group did not have 100 dollars, but Ambassador Kubíček said: 'I will give you 100 dollars. When you win the protest, you will return it to me.' The leader of the expedition, Vašek Mudra, was also an athlete, but he was from Dukla. He, as the leader of the expedition and God's Eye, said: 'That is unthinkable. We can't protest against the Soviet Union, that's impossible!' So with that, we finished the match. We lost it, but it was close, and that was the end of it. If this had not happened, we still might have lost, but we lost face completely. Everyone told us. Then the organizers also told us: 'Both teams are off. We will allow you to play again. The court will be free.' But it wasn't possible. One cannot protest against the socialist Soviet Union. There can't be any mistake.'

  • "Big, it wasn't even a moment, but the entire May Revolution. That's how I remember it. I was a ten-year-old child, and those were such emotions. To this day, I know what I was wearing. I know how heavy the cobblestones were because we lived opposite the radio station, so that's where a tram stopped. They put the tow tram perpendicularly across the street, dug up the cobblestones, and placed those in the tram. Dead Germans were also put there. They put the Czech fighters who died in our basement. I am still traumatized by that to this day. Long after the revolution, I saw them lying there sprinkled with lime. The memories of the revolution are vivid because mom and dad helped the Czechs in the radio station building. A baker stayed in the house next door. He had been baking bread and rolls since the Saturday the revolution began. And because the shelters connected in the block, people went there to buy rolls and bread. Mom and Dad also shopped there. Mom cooked potato soup. She also made coffee and some chicory, and they brought that to the people that reported on air about what was happening and how people should help at the radio station. Those are the memories of the revolution for me, and they are still vivid.”

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    Praha, 20.05.2022

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During the war, she saw people being shot at. After the war, she shot hoops and won three world bronze medals.

Ludmila Ordnungová in a jump in the Sparta Prague jersey. This match is from 1954
Ludmila Ordnungová in a jump in the Sparta Prague jersey. This match is from 1954
zdroj: witness archive

Ludmila Ordnungová, née Lundáková, was born on 16 August 1934, in Prague. Her father was a butcher, and her mother a seamstress. Ludmila Ordnungová experienced the occupation of Prague by the German army as a five-year-old on 15 March 1939. During the Heydrich rampage in 1942, German soldiers searched Lundák‘s apartment but found nothing linked to the resistance against Nazism. In May 1945, she watched the Czech insurgents fight against the Germans in front of the radio station in Prague. They lived directly across from the Lundák family. In the summer of 1945, the family moved to Karlovy Vary, where the father acquired a meat and cured meat shop from a German tradesman. After the communist coup in 1948, he lost his butcher shop. The system at that time was getting groceries for food stamps, but he sold products from leftover meat, and someone reported him. He served four months in prison. Ludmila Ordnungová used to do athletics and skiing in elementary school. She started playing basketball in Karlovy Vary roughly at the age of 15. She studied at the grammar school and performed in a music ensemble where Waldemar Matuška also sang. She wanted to go to the Institute of Physical Education and Sports in Prague after graduation, but because of her father‘s bourgeois background, they did not accept her. In 1954, she transferred from Karlovy Vary to Sparta in Prague. She enrolled in the Faculty of Education, where she successfully graduated. In 1957, she won a bronze medal at the World Basketball Championship in Brazil with the national team. Together with them, she also won third place at the 1959 World Championship in Moscow and the 1958 European Championship in Łódź. She won the domestic championship title once with Sparta. She ended her sports career in 1962 while expecting a child. She married the renowned coach Nikolaj Ordnung. Together they raised two sons and one daughter. Ludmila Ordnungova‘s husband worked as a UN expert for Asia and the Pacific, so the family lived in exotic foreign countries for many years. In 1967, Ludmila Ordnungová experienced the Six-Day war between Israel and Arab countries in Lebanon. She also witnessed four revolutions during her stay in Thailand. In the eighties, she worked at the Central House of the Army (ÚDA). State Security monitored her for more than a year as a screened person. In 2022, she lived in Prague and worked as a guide for foreign tourists.