This season is a big one for Tralee Magic Basketball Club. We are 25 years old.

From one team in 2001 to a club that now has hundreds of boys and girls playing basketball every week, there is a lot of history to look back on — and plenty still to build.

To mark the milestone, the club is planning 25 celebrations across the season. They won't all be big events, and that is very deliberate. Some will happen at training, some at games and some will simply be a chance to recognise the people who have given their time to Magic over the years.

There will be tournaments and a special version of our annualk Christmas Jamboree. We are also delighted that the Dillon Quirke Foundation will be part of the year, bringing its important cardiac screening programme to the club.

At the heart of it all will be 25 Stories for 25 Years.

Over the coming months, we will tell the stories of 25 people whose lives have crossed with the club.

Some will have international caps and National Cup medals. Others will be coaches, volunteers, parents or former players whose contribution can't be measured by a result.

We want the player who joined as a six-year-old and never really left. The parent who came to watch training and somehow ended up running a team. The coach who has spent years giving up evenings and weekends. The former player whose closest friends are still the people they met through basketball.

Together, those stories will probably tell our history better than any list of trophies ever could.

The club was founded as Tralee Imperials in 2001 by Paddy Garvey, John Herrick, John Brosnan and Fiona Brosnan.

There was already a huge love of basketball in Tralee, but the aim was to create a club where young players could learn the game and have somewhere to play it.

From that first team, the club grew.

For many years Imperials became particularly well known for girls' and women's basketball, producing strong teams and players who went on to compete at the highest levels of the Irish game.

There were plenty of big days along the way.

The club won the U20 National Cup in 2011, while the years that followed brought National League success, National Cup final appearances and individual national awards. We have 5 national titles in total!

Names such as Sinead Mackessy and Emma Sherwood feature prominently in the club's Roll of Honour, while coaches including Liam Culloty, John Dowling and Tomás O’Hanlon have played important roles in developing players, building teams and shaping the club across different generations.

And then there is Jimmy Diggins.

Jimmy's contribution to basketball in Tralee stretches back much further than the club's own history. He was inducted into the Basketball Ireland Coaches Hall of Fame in 2016, received a Basketball Ireland Presidents Award in 2018 and became the first member of the Tralee Magic Hall of Fame in 2023.

Boys joined the club in 2013, adding another strand to what was already a growing juvenile programme and helping shape the club we know today.

Nearly a decade later, in 2022, members voted to change the name from Tralee Imperials to Tralee Magic Basketball Club.

The club had changed a lot in the years since 2001. It had grown in numbers, broadened across age groups and become home to a new generation of players and families. The move to Tralee Magic gave the club a name that felt more in step with what it had become — one club, built around basketball, development and the magic that happens when players, coaches, families and volunteers work together so that our kids can play the sport they love.

Today, around 400 children are involved in Magic, from the smallest players starting out in our Academy through the juvenile age groups and onwards into senior basketball.

That growth has brought challenges too, particularly finding enough court space.

For that reason, securing a long-term lease to use Mounthawk as our home court and primary training court is one of the most important developments in the club's recent history.

For the first time, Magic has the security of a long-term home.

Mounthawk is where many of our teams train, where Academy players take their first steps in basketball and where so many of our home games are played. It gives the club a solid base to build from in the years ahead.

One of the things we take greatest pride in is seeing where basketball takes our players.

Over the years, Magic players have represented Kerry and Munster, worn Irish jerseys at underage level, played National League basketball and earned opportunities to study and play in the United States and Europe.

In 2025, the Magic U20 women brought another National Cup back to Tralee when they won the Ken Clarke U20 Women's National Cup, with Mary Kate Smith named MVP.

Then came another club first in 2026 when Leeroy Odiahi and Aivaras Uosis, both developed through Magic's juvenile programme, made their senior Ireland debuts.

There are more young players following behind them, earning provincial and Irish selections, progressing into senior basketball and taking up college opportunities overseas.

We are so proud of them, not because we expect every child who walks into the Academy to become an international player, but because they show younger players where the game can take them...the places it goes and the doors it can open.

For all the medals, Irish jerseys and big basketball moments, Magic remains a volunteer-run club.

There no staff behind it.

There are parents opening gyms, coaches arriving after work, managers organising teams, people sitting at tables, washing jerseys, driving to games and doing the hundred other small jobs that have to happen before a child can walk onto a court and play basketball.

Many of this season's celebrations will recognise those people and bring different generations of Magic back together.

We would love former players, coaches, volunteers and families to get involved too.

Dig out the old photographs. Find the jerseys at the back of the wardrobe. Tell us about the road trips, the teams, the coaches, the big wins, the disastrous losses and the people you still talk to because basketball introduced you all those years ago.

There have been a lot of baskets scored in 25 years.

But the people are the story.

With hundreds of young players in the club and a long-term home at Mounthawk, there is plenty to look back on — and even more to build on.