Liz Chase
Zimbabwean field hockey player (1950–2018)
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Elizabeth Muriel Chase (26 April 1950 – 9 May 2018) was a Zimbabwean field hockey player and member of the national team that won the gold medal at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow. Previously, she represented South Africa.
| Personal information | |||||||||||||||
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| Born | 26 April 1950 | ||||||||||||||
| Died | 9 May 2018 (aged 68) | ||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Born in Umtali (today Mutare), Chase attended Girls High School in Salisbury (today Harare).[1] She was on the national schools field hockey team in 1966, and later the national under-21 team.[1] After graduating, she went to South Africa to get a degree in physical education.[1] There, she played for the university varsity team and the local provincial sides of Wits and Southern Transvaal.[1] In 1973/74 she was chosen to play for the South Africa B team, and in 1976/77 she represented the Springbok Ladies hockey team.[1] During the 1970s, she lost friends and family in the Rhodesian Bush War.[2]
Upon returning to Rhodesia, Chase played for the Old Hararians club and taught physical education at Oriel Girls High School in Salisbury.[1] She was selected every year for the Zimbabwe women's national team before she emigrated to South Africa in the early 1980s.[1] She worked as head of the physical education department at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2000 and retired in 2015.[1][3]
Chase died of cancer on 9 May 2018 in Johannesburg, two weeks after her 68th birthday. She is the first member of the 1980 Olympic field hockey team to die. [1][3]
