Hi! We are the Ireland U16 Women’s Basketball team. We are a team of 12 players representing 12 different schools, 9 different club teams across 7 different counties throughout Ireland. We have been together since October 2012 when the squad was initially made up of 24 players and we are now lucky and fortunate to have 12 players in the final team.

This Summer we will be travelling to Tallin, Estonia to compete in the FIBA European Championships. This is the highest level of competition for our age group and we are really excited for the challenges that await us.

Over the past 18 months we have been preparing for this tournament by holding many training camps throughout Ireland and playing friendly games against Scotland, Uni Girona, Catalan U16 National team and England with games against Luxembourg and possibly Austria still to come.

The European Championships will run from 31^st July until 10^th August and in our initial group games we will meet Finland, Poland and Romania with the possibility of facing England, Germany, Switzerland and many other top quality national teams in the later stages of the competition.

We have set up a PledgeSports campaign so that we can raise the money to help reduce the costs of travelling to and competing in the European Championships. The cost for team and staff to travel to the tournament and to cover food and accommodation while we are in Tallin currently sits at just under €15,000.

Our international basketball programme is completely self-funded which means that the parents and players have to pay for all training camps, preparation games and the costs associated with travel and accommodation at these, in addition to all the costs associated with travelling to and competing at the European Championships. Our governing body Basketball Ireland are not in a position to provide financial assistance at this point in our programme and we do not receive any funding from the Irish Sports Council or any other awarding body so we must arrange as many fundraising activities as we can to try and take the financial burden off the players and their families. Unfortunately if we do not raise the money we will not be able to afford to travel to the tournament.

We hope that you will support our team in our journey and dream to compete successfully at the highest level of competition we can.

We hope to raise €3,000 through PledgeSports

Thank you for your support and for all contributions!