Sport

Liffey Celtics leaping ahead in pursuit of basketball cup glory

Volunteer-run Leixlip club becomes home from home for Polish player Anna Pupin

Liffey Celtics player Anna Pupin with her son Jan (3) at a team training session. Photograph: Aidan Crawley

Cliona Foley
Thu Jan 26 2017 - 06:00

It was Jimmy Clarke’s son-in-law who designed Liffey Celtics’ eye-catching logo when the basketball club sprang up just 13 years ago.

It’s of a cartoon fish leaping from a river to dunk into a net and looks straight out of central NBA casting.

But it’s actually an image that totally nails the Kildare club’s identity. Leixlip is a village bisected by the Liffey and, as Gaeilge, its name is ‘Léim an Bhradáin’ – salmon leap.

City clubs from Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Limerick have largely dominated the Irish women’s game yet Courtyard Liffey Celtics have quickly hustled their way up to Superleague and on Sunday contest the blue-riband of domestic basketball, the Hula Hoops Senior Cup final.

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They face Cork giants Glanmire who are chasing another league/cup double, so this is David v Goliath stuff and Liffey Celtics are the ones clutching the sling.

But Celtics’ 11-point semi-final victory over DCU Mercy and how close they pushed Glanmire earlier in the season means they will be no pushovers, especially as the champions’ unbeaten Superleague run was ended by Waterford Wildcats last weekend.

This is a momentous occasion for a new young club whose narrative is all about integration and community-building.

Stronghold

Their Superleague squad features two Americans and a Pole but it is a club that prides itself on growing its own talent, even if chairman Joe Tiernan and secretary Annette O’Toole are, technically, among their first ‘blow-ins’.

Joe is from Mohill in Co Leitrim and Annette is a native of Cleggan, near Clifden, neither a basketball stronghold.

Yet now they are the engine of one and their daughters – Ailbhe (26) and Aine O’Connor (25) and Aoife (19) and Sorcha Tiernan (17) – will be leading the charge on Sunday.

Founded by Vinny Homan and company around 2003, Liffey Celtics has also benefitted from some experienced heads and bodies during its rapid growth spurt.

Jimmy Clarke – who had coached NBL sides like Naomh Mhuire and Drimnagh Dynamos – planned a complete break from the hardcourt when he moved to Leixlip in the early noughties but was persuaded otherwise while lifting “a quiet pint one night”. He is still involved today and happiest coaching their juveniles.

Former international star Suzanne Maguire and Caitriona White (ex-Waterford) are two players who provided vital experience when Celtics won their breakthrough Division One NBL title in 2011.

But how did a small, suburban club successfully vault that chasm to the Superleague, where they are now joint third of nine teams?

“It had got to a point where we were so successful underage that we were going to lose our top players to other national league clubs if we didn’t start up our own,” O’Toole says.

Scorched

They still roll their eyes at the mauling they got in their first Division One game in Killarney in 2009 and despite winning that division a season later – when they also won basketball’s ‘Club of the Year’ – they got similarly scorched in the Superleague.

“Won one match in our first two years!” Joe Tiernan recalls. “We were probably lucky that there was no automatic relegation at first. Basketball Ireland gave ourselves and Brunell two seasons to find our feet.”

Mark Byrne (ex-Meteors) came in as Superleague coach this year and his tough pre-season regime of training included four sessions of two hours, including 9am starts on Saturdays and Sundays.

The club fields 20 more teams, male and female, apart from its senior women, from U11 upwards and has another 90 children, aged 7-10, in its academy.

Their underage talent, led by coaching stalwarts like Yvonne Bracken, have helped schools in Lucan and Leixlip win All-Ireland U16A cups in the last two years. This corner of Kildare/Dublin is now hoops country.

Celtics’ location actually helps. Not only are their players blooded in the ultra-competitive Dublin leagues but their proximity to NUI Maynooth means their Superleague team can avail of the Sport Changes Lives foundation, run by former Irish internationals Gareth Maguire and Deirdre Brennan.

Scholar athletes

This funds elite American scholar athletes to come to Ireland to do a Masters while volunteering to play sport in the local community.

That programme provides New Yorker Gemma O’Connor to Celtics this season and their other American, top scorer Jazmen Boone, is an ex-Waterford SCL player who is now a bank intern locally.

Like many basketball clubs on Dublin’s north and west perimeters, the club also benefitted from the demographic changes bequeathed by the Celtic Tiger.

Many immigrants, particularly Filipinos and eastern Europeans, settled in affordable suburbs like Celtics’ catchment area and basketball is their game.

Leixlip Nemunas – a successful largely eastern European men’s team – also train at Confey GAA Club which is one of Celtics’ two training venues.

The club offers local immigrants a chance to integrate through their favourite sport and immerse their Irish children in it.

Celtics currently has 10 players on Irish U16 squads and some of their names – Beatrice Olaru, Cholo Anoneuvo and Kabir Aknaib – underline the area and club’s multicultural mix.

Anna Pupin (29) is a key figure on their cup final team. She comes from a town called Zgorzelec (pop: 32,000) whose local men’s team were Polish champions in 2014. Before she left home, Pupin’s U17 team ranked top three in Poland.

“I came here for loooove!” she grins, explaining that she followed an ex-boyfriend to Ireland 10 years ago.

Working first in Blackrock Clinic and living in Monkstown, she initially joined Meteors but their base in Sandyford meant a two-hour journey on public transport before she had a car so she never got past training with them.

New family

Through friends she later hooked up with Liffey Celtics, was a starter when they won Division One and now lives in Lucan.

She quit for a few years due to a back injury and pregnancy but when her child turned one she returned, though eased herself back by playing Division One ball with Killester.

That led to playing Superleague and the cup final with Killester last year but a change in eligibility rules allowed her to return to Celtics, her home from home.

Her husband is also Polish and their son Jan (3) often plays quietly along the sidelines during training, a necessity for a busy young couple without the support of an immediate family network around them.

Pupin went back to college (DIT) last year. She somehow juggles her studies and motherhood with her work as a medical secretary and playing for college and club. Her husband also returned to part-time studies this year.

Their parents sometimes fly over to help out when they are stretched to breaking point but basketball has provided Pupin with a new family of sorts.

“You hang around with Polish people initially because you don’t know anybody and your English isn’t good enough but, when they’re settled, a lot of Polish people get back to their hobbies here,” she says. “We even have a few Polish referees in our league.”

Leixlip is no longer a village and the river that runs through it now is not just the Liffey but a stream of humanity from all parts of the country and corners of the globe.

One brave, volunteer-run basketball club helps unite them. Long may Celtics’ salmon leap.