History

The Protea Sports Club, situated on Main Road, Retreat, was founded in 1964, after a demonstration given to the mayor of Cape Town and other Civic dignitaries of the sporting achievements of a group of successful disabled athletes at the Stoke Mandeville Games and Tokyo Paralympics. The Club’s primary function was to assist in the rehabilitation of paraplegics through the medium of sport, primary archery. The club was founded by two physiotherapists from the Princess Alice hospital to provide a venue for paraplegics to continue taking part in sport after their discharge from hospital.

Since then the club has expanded its activities to include tennis, field events for the disabled, table tennis, wheelchair rugby for quadriplegics and is the home venue for the St Giles wheelchair basketball team. We also have a social Section for Disabled which play board games and goes on cultural outings.

The club’s primary activity is archery, being one of the biggest archery venues in South Africa and one of only three archery clubs in the greater Cape Town area. It is affiliated to the Western Province archery Association as well as the Western Province association for the Physically Disabled. We receive no public funding and rely on membership fees, private donations and fundraising events to purchase the expensive and specialized equipment needed for Sport for the Disabled.

Over the years we have produced a number of national champions, Olympians and Paralympians in various sporting disciplines.