Biggest season yet for the Cavan Eagles
Cavan Eagles Basketball Club will put two teams on the national stage this season, and both of them start on the same evening.
On Saturday, October 3, the club's women open their Domino's Women's Super League campaign away to Midlands Park Portlaoise Panthers at 7pm, while 200 miles south the men play their first game at national level, against Fr, Mathews in Cork at 7.30pm.
A week later, the two campaigns come home together. On Saturday, October 10 the Virginia Show Centre hosts a double-header. The women’s team are against FloMAX Liffey Celtics at 3pm, then the men against Trinity College at 5.45pm. For a club founded in 2012, which entered the National League only four seasons ago, it is the biggest season it has taken on.
The women go into their second season in the top flight. The Super League has ten teams this year and the top eight reach the play-offs, a competition the Eagles reached at the first attempt last season, while the 9th & 10th teams battle it out for relegation.
The men are in the new Men's National League Division Two, an eight-team division being played for the first time. It runs as a straight league, the winners go up to Division One, the top four make the play-offs and nobody is relegated.
The most eye-catching arrivals are on the women's side. Kilah Freelon spent last season as a starting forward in the Atlantic Coast Conference, playing her home games at Virginia Tech's 8,925-seat Cassell Coliseum. This year she will play in the Virginia Show Centre, with a capacity that is a fraction of Cassell's, though one that was often full last winter.
Freelon is a 6ft 1in forward from Denver. She played three seasons at Texas Tech, whose United Supermarkets Arena seats 15,098, and was named to the All-Big 12 Academic Team.
She moved to Virginia Tech for her final year and started all 32 games. She averaged 9.5 points and 8.5 rebounds, shot 51.3 per cent from the field and finished in the ACC's top 15 in eight statistical categories. Feelon’s career-high 18 rebounds came against NC State.
Meanwhile, Darrione Rogers, a 5ft 11in guard from Chicago, was an ESPN five-star recruit at Lake Park West High School. She spent three seasons at DePaul in the Big East, where the home court is the 10,387-seat Wintrust Arena. She was named to the conference's All-Freshman team and to the All-Big East Second Team in 2023. She then moved to Mississippi State in the SEC, whose Humphrey Coliseum, known locally as “The Hump”, seats 9,100. She finished her college career at Miami in the ACC. She arrived there with 1,399 career points and 234 three-pointers, and then led the Hurricanes in three-point shooting at 38.5 per cent.
John Stephens, the Cavan head coach, says their experience matters less than their attitude. “You look at where Darrione and Kilah have played and the conferences they've come through, and you know they'll bring standards into the gym every night,” he said. “But what struck me most talking to them was how much they wanted to be part of a club, not just a team. That matters here.”
The game they have come from
The standard Rogers and Freelon have played at is a reminder of how large women's basketball has become in the United States, and of what happens when the question of equality in sport is settled early. In 1972 the United States passed Title IX, which requires any school receiving federal money to give women and girls the same opportunity to play sport as men and boys. Before it, fewer than 32,000 women played college sport, under 16 per cent of all college athletes. By 2019/20 the figure was 222,920, or 44 per cent.
The women's college game is now a serious business. In 2024, Caitlin Clark's Iowa drew an average of 18.9 million viewers for their final against South Carolina, the first time a women's final attracted a bigger audience than the men's, which drew 14.8 million. In Ireland the same argument is being had more slowly. The merger of the GAA, the Ladies Gaelic Football Association and the Camogie Association, once targeted for April 2027, lost its chair this month when Mary McAleese resigned after the GAA sought to pause the process. Basketball in Ireland has fewer of those structures to unwind: the men's and women's games sit under one association, and in Virginia the women's team reached the national top flight first, with the men following a year later.
A family business
For all the talent from abroad, the Eagles are still a local club, and the Tolan family is to the forefront. Niamh Tolan, a former Ireland underage international who came up through the club, captains the side again.
Her sister Ciara was one of the team's most consistent players last season. She returned from injury in the second half of the campaign and had 15 points and seven rebounds against Liffey Celtics in November. Both are dual athletes and line out with Lurgan Ladies.
The third sister, Emma Tolan captained Ireland at the 2026 FIBA U20 Women's EuroBasket in Bulgaria in August and is currently in the USA where she plays with the prestigious Oklahoma University.
Last season as a freshman she played in 22 games and made her NCAA Tournament debut against Idaho in March. “We're all so proud of Emma – it's brilliant to see a girl from Virginia doing what she's doing in Oklahoma,” Niamh Tolan said. “But Ciara and myself have a job to do here. Our home crowd were unbelievable last season, and we want to give them plenty to shout about again.”
Much of the rest of the squad has international experience. Katie O'Sullivan joined from Liffey Celtics in 2025 after playing for Ireland at the U20 Women's EuroBasket in Hungary. That October she gave the club the most important result in its short Super League history. She drove a 13–0 third-quarter run and finished with 21 points and four steals as Cavan beat Midlands Park Portlaoise Panthers 70–57 for their first win in the top flight.
The Glavin twins, Ellie and Emma, arrive from Tullamore by way of University of Galway Mystics. Both were in Ireland's squad for the 2023 U20 European Championships. Naomi Farrington, a guard from Tolka Rovers, was named in the Ireland U18 squad for this summer's FIBA Youth EuroBasket in Romania.
Casey Mulvey, a key player in the club's unbeaten Division One campaign, returns to the club where she started. Crucially, the club's own juvenile teams are also producing players. Cara Costello and Nnenna Okosisi came through the Eagles' teams and Pathways programme, starred for the under-16 side last season and have now been promoted to the Super League squad.
“Cara and Nnenna coming through is what this club is about,” Stephens said. “They've trained alongside international players and they've earned their place.”
Stephens was named Basketball Ireland's Division One Coach of the Year for 2024/25. He is assisted by Padhraig McEvoy and Jane Larkin, with Dee Tuohy as team manager.
Unfinished business
The Eagles' rise has been fast by any standard. In 2024/25 they won all 22 of their games, taking the Division One league and cup double, and sealed promotion with a 67–58 win over Limerick Celtics.
Their first Super League season brought seven wins. They beat Brunell away from home, SETU Waterford Wildcats after overtime, Trinity Meteors in Virginia, and Portlaoise 83–53 on their own court in January. They reached the play-offs, where Killester, the National Cup holders, beat them 61–50 in the quarter-final on 21 March.
Liffey Celtics were a particular problem. The Kildare side beat Cavan twice last season by a combined ten points. In Virginia in November, the Eagles came back from 11 points down, only for a last-second three-pointer to bounce out in a 76–73 defeat. In Leixlip in February, a game with 11 lead changes and nine ties ended 82–75 to Liffey.
Liffey are Cavan's first visitors to the Show Centre, on Saturday 10 October.
“We haven't forgotten those two games,” Stephens said. “We were right there both times and didn't finish it. That's the lesson – close isn't good enough, and the girls know that better than anyone.”
The men follow
The club's senior men are also moving up. Last season they won the NEBB Division One league and the NEBB Top 4. That earned the Affinity Institute Cavan Eagles a place in Basketball Ireland's new Men's National League Division Two, the first time a Cavan Eagles men's team has competed at national level.
Their opponents in the new division are Athlone, Ballina Braves, Dublin Raiders, Fr Mathews, Ongar Chasers, Team North West and Trinity College — a schedule that will take the squad to Cork, Mayo, Donegal, Westmeath and Dublin over the winter.
Their main signing is Fritz Hauser, a 6ft 8in forward from Vermont, USA. He played four seasons at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, in NCAA Division III, and was part of the side that reached the Final Four in 2025 and the Sweet Sixteen this year. As a senior he started all 30 games and scored a career-high 30 points, including eight three-pointers, against Bates.
Ryan McCormick is player-coach, with Paul Grealy as his assistant and Sandra Ryan McCann as manager. The men begin in the cup. They play Fr Mathews in Cork on 3rd October, then their first home game against Trinity College on 10th October.
“Cork on the first night is a proper start,” McCormick said, “and then to play our first home game at national level on the same day as the women – you couldn't have planned it better for the club.”
One Saturday in October
The two teams' schedules meet on 10th October. The women play Liffey Celtics at 3pm, and at 5.45pm the men play Trinity College in the club's first home game at national level.
“We're representing Cavan every time we go out,” McCormick said. “If we bring the work rate that got us here, we'll give ourselves a chance.”
In 2012 the club played regional basketball across four counties. On 10th October, a guard who played three seasons in the Big East, a forward who started every game of an ACC season, and a men's team in its first season at national level will all be in action under the same roof, in the club's home town. Whatever the results, Cavan has not had a basketball season like it.