Excitement builds as Mayo sides gear up for basketball season

The top teams in Mayo are ready to get started as the first tip-off in the Basketball Ireland Development League approaches.

On the weekend of October 18, the Mayo Meteors and Merry Monk Ballina get their campaigns underway. 

MERRY MONK BALLINA

These are exciting times in Ballina. Last year, I wrote 'The buzz is back with Ballina basketball' and for the new season, the Moysiders are kicking it up a notch again. They have just hired a professional director of coaching, Marc Illescas, from outside Barcelona in Spain, who joined Merry Monk just a couple of weeks ago.

“The idea was that he can come in and help the coaches, coach the coaches, obviously coach the players, and raise standards across the board,” explains senior team player Ronan O'Malley, in a pre-season interview with The Mayo News.

“It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for a club to have a professional or some external coaching. It happens in Cork and Dublin all the time. So we're trying to keep up with them or trying to close the gap as much as we can.”

Someone like Marc Illescas brings in a fresh perspective from outside the organisation. Ballina are known for a fast-paced brand of basketball, moving the ball quickly up and down the court. 

“Marc wants us to be able to adapt our pace, which is completely accurate. What happens when you come up against a team that can run better than us? Do we want to still push the pace against them? So Marc is saying: ' we must be able to slow it down'.”

The acquisition of a director of coaching is certainly another step up in a booming basketball environment. Ballina boasts four U-12 teams, three U-14 groups, two U-16 outfits, and a U-18 and U-20 team, which compete in a nationwide league. Recently, there has been a constant conveyor belt of promising talent from the youth ranks into the senior team. The old guard is still standing, with veteran Ronan McGarrity still on board; the same goes for Ronan O'Malley himself.

“We're basically the same crew as last year. There's fresh talent pushing up, such as Jack Diffley. He's U-18 but he'll be playing with our U-20 team, and like others, he'll be introduced to the senior squad,” says O'Malley.

Last season Ballina very narrowly missed out on the cup play-offs; it came down to head-to-head result, which went against the Mayo boys. But they finished the campaign in style, winning the Plate final on a day out in Dublin. Getting to the cup play-offs and making a final this season is the next step up.

“Probably one issue, player-wise, that hadn't come up before is some lads going away to college, which is brilliant. They're going away, having the time of their lives there, but we miss them midweek training now. So the likes of Mark Cunningham, Brian Donohoe, and Dave Murray, they're all in first year in college.”

On the plus side, Brian and Cian Morrison, who were on the St Muredach's school team that won the All-Ireland double, are coming back to Merry Monk this year.

MAYO METEORS

The Meteors are a mixed bag this year, difficult to predict. They have lost a few bodies over the summer, but are determined to remain competitive.

“Conor Bermingham, who was with us last year, has gone to college and Colm Hegarty moved away,” Alex Evans tells The Mayo News.

To make matters worse, Jack Diffily left the Meteors to join Mayo rivals Ballina. But it’s not all doom and gloom in Castlebar - there are some new additions to the squad.

Castlebar Comets have a really successful underage team, and a few of those starlets are ready to make the leap to senior and have filled the ranks of the Meteors.

“So we have a good crop of five or six there who are still U-18 and are finally getting the dose of senior basketball, which is really good for them. They're really talented and have shown in the past few weeks that they can contribute this year. So that's huge for us going forward. We need that and we need people to step up.”

What's going to help the Meteors' fortunes is the experience which remains in the squad. Hermann Heyl and Paul Freeman are still on board, and so are club founders Dan Nyland and Evans himself.

The young players certainly bring a lot of energy, but they will need a steady hand coaching them and the loss of Terry Kennedy, the head coach behind the Meteors' rise, who stepped away from high profile involvement a few weeks ago, will be hard-felt.

“It's obviously tough”, Evans admits: “There's not a whole lot of coaches around, much less coaches at the level and the pedigree of Terry. There were times last year when Terry wasn't there and Dan Nyland and Paul Freeman player-coached.”

It'll be some job to permanently replace a coach like Kennedy. He had a wealth of experience in the game and was the mastermind behind Ballina's national success when they brought cups to the Moy in the early 1990s.

Nevertheless, the Meteors believe they have a fantastic team spirit: “We're not going to just go out there to compete. We want to make the playoffs and push ourselves as hard as we can.”

Evans points out, the local league (LLR) will see the young players to get plenty of game time and gain experience. Last season they won the LLR, so defending this title would be a great achievement.

“We can't wait to get going. Everyone's really excited. We didn't really stop much after last season. We had a couple of weeks off, and we were back to scrimmage and really early. These are exciting times.”