Offaly girls represent Ireland in basketball

Two girls from Ballinamere had the honour of representing Ireland last weekend in separate Basketball tournaments.

Niamh Galvin played for the Irish Under 17 team against the Scottish National Team in a friendly tournament held in Belfast while Úna O' Brien played for the Under 16 team in the European Championships being held in Podgorica Montenegro. This is a notable achievement in so much as the two girls are near neighbours in a small parish who are playing basketball at International level.

Úna's team are in a particularly difficult group with opposition from Sweden, Cyprus, Bulgaria and hosts Montenegro. So far, they have lost to Sweden in a close match and Montenegro while they had a strong 20 point win over Cyprus. Úna showed well in her games so far taking 3 rebounds against Sweden and scoring while she was joint highest scorer against Montenegro for the Irish girls. Impressively she scored both with her stronger right hand and also her left against Montenegro highlighting some of the dexterity skills that can be developed through basketball. The U16 games continue throughout the week until the classification games end next Sunday. 

Interestingly one of Úna's team mates is Ciara Brogan of the well-known Dublin footballing family. Niamh and Úna are also capable footballers with Ballinamere/Durrow Lgfa. 

Niamh debuted recently at midfield for the B/D Senior side who are in their first ever Offaly Senior Football Championship campaign. Its wouldn't be a surprise either to see Úna despite being only 15 feature in the later stages of the football championship as the B/D team is a particularly young squad at the early stages of their development as a senior force. The two girls are from very sporting families. Úna's older sister Meadhbh is already a Superleague basketballer and captains the B/D seniors. Niamh's dad and uncle played senior football for Daingean at one stage. Both Úna's parents have represented Offaly in football with her Dad Barney (who recently was a selector for Ballinamere hurlers) having played in All Ireland Minor final in 1989 and played Senior for Offaly including a notable Leinster Championship win over All Ireland Champions Meath in 2000. 

Ireland U16s play Bulgaria at 12:30pm on Tuesday 15th August and the game can be watched on the FIBA youtube channel.