Auvergne basketball monument, Edith Tavert died at the age of 93

So naturally that in 1947, the one everyone quickly called “Tata” was crowned French junior champion with AS Montferrand. An end of studies of EPS at Insep takes him to play at the US Metro before returning to Clermont in 1949 thanks to his assignment to the Jeanne-D’Arc high school. The beginning of a long (43 years) and extraordinary lease at the ASM.

Edith Tavert in the ASM jersey.

A 167cm rear, skilful, elegant on and off the court, little Edith won three national titles in 1958, 1959 and 1962 and triumphed in the Coupe de France in 1957 and 1958 in the yellow and blue jersey. Enough to make her a part of the France team of the 1950s with which she will accumulate 63 selections.

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Captain, the Clermontoise notably led France to a bronze medal at the 1953 World Cup in Chile, which remains, even today, the best result of the Bleues in this competition.

Thanks to her assertive character and a keen sense of sharing and transmission, Edith Tavert quickly took on the role of player-coach and, under her watch, the ASM women’s basketball section became the best in France in a few seasons: sportingly, as we have said, but also quantitatively with numbers multiplied by seven.

So when, in 1964, for obscure reasons, she was pushed out of the ASM, it was an earthquake that shook Auvergne basketball. “It’s a wound that will never heal,” said Edith Tavert recently who will create in the process, and without measuring its future scope, a monument of French basketball: the women’s section of the Clermont University Club.

Edith Tavert, here squatting in the center, in the costume of president of the ASM, in 1977, was one of the great figures of regional basketball (archive photo La Montagne). From left to right: Fabienne Dumontal, Christine Volpin, Patricia Hahn, Sylvie Pavet, Marie-Christine Rothier, Debbie Ricketts, Marylène Fergette, Nicole Denis, Pascale Vincent, Sylvie Meynial, Viviane Labille, Sylvie Gorgewski. In the foreground: Edith Tavert, M. Furet (coach) and “Kiri”

Symbol of his popularity at the ASM, it is more than a hundred licensees who will accompany him to the neighboring university, including the future legend of the CUC Jacky Chazalon. “Edith was such a monument, especially as a player, we were there for her, the whole section followed her. At the CUC, we were sent back to the departmental level, at the bottom of the ladder, it was lamentable on the part of the Fed. But without this departure, there would not have been the epic of the CUC, ”recalls the emblematic player of the second most successful club in history with her 13 national crowns from 1969 to 1981.

Edith Tavert participated in the first three before taking a step back with basketball. She therefore did not live the most glorious years of the CUC with the European Cup finals of champion clubs, but she will nevertheless be, by everyone’s admission, the great instigator.

“We were in the continuity of the ASM which already had three titles and a European Cup, we were there to win titles”, judges Chazalon who retains of Edith Tavert the image of an “extraordinary trainer, an incredible pedagogue, invested. She was so elegant, always made up, very feminine. »

Caught up by the passion for basketball, Edith Tavert will accept in 1975 to take the presidency of her lifelong club, the ASM. A position she held until 1988. “I believe that I have always been profoundly Asemist, even when I left for the CUC”, said the woman whose rich life ended this week, at the age of 93 years old.

Edith Tavert was decorated by Brice Hortefeux with the rank of Knight of the Legion of Honor in 2009.

A life spent in the service of others, as will also be shown by her 26 years as a PE teacher, her 16 years as an adviser to the departmental management of Youth and Sports or, once retirement comes, her double mandate as assistant at the town hall of Vic-le-Comte. “Nothing great is achieved without passion. I believe so,” she concluded in one of the last interviews she gave to our newspaper.

To his family, to Karine and Franck his children, as well as to all his loved ones, The mountain sends its most sincere condolences.