Kyaja Williams, or ‘JJ’, as she’s known to her Irish clubmates, sports a recently gifted necklace which is giving her all the feels right now.
“It says ‘Brunell’ on the front and has the initials of two of the kids from the club on the back,” she enthuses, lifting it above her collar to show the inscriptions. “They got one each for me and Jayla [Johnson, the team’s other American] because we couldn’t go home at Christmas.”
Coming to Cork for her third year overseas was a gamble.
The 25-year-old from Baltimore, Maryland was hurt, physically and emotionally, after two seasons in Portugal. With scars already on her basketball passport she arrived guarded and sceptical – but Brunell immediately won her over.
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“I knew I was in a good place when they came and got me from the airport. We had to drive four hours but in the car they made me feel like I wasn’t a stranger. They’re always making sure we’re okay because we’re so far from home. Brunell is just like a big family.”
The whole tribe from the Parochial Hall will travel to the InsureMyHouse.ie National Cup Finals in Tallaght tomorrow, pursuing unprecedented club history.
Not only are they yearning for a first Paudie O’Connor senior title but they’ve also made the U20 and U18 deciders so are chasing a notable treble.
This monumental achievement, during their 40th anniversary, is testament to all the great people, on and off-court, who have sustained the club over the years but sadly their gentle patriarch just missed it.
Andrew Drumm, who founded the all-female club in Gurranabraher in 1984, died in late September.
In an era when social media has helped women to finally amplify their presence and rights in sport, male allies and visionaries like Drumm can go unheralded but not in Brunell, who wear black ribbons on their singlets to honour him.
Kieran O’Leary, steeped in Blue Demons until he had two daughters and went looking for a club that took girls, has been involved with ‘the Nellies’ for almost 28 years and will coach their U18s against Meteors on Sunday (12:15).
Drumm, he says “was the glue who kept the club together and still does. He was the gentleman of all gentlemen. From what I gather he was involved in volleyball first and went from that to basketball. Andrew was a single man with no family and just one brother. Basketball and the GAA were his life.”
Drumm worked in the paint factory on the Mallow Road and lived on the Commons Road up to seven years ago, when he moved to a nursing home. The club had planned an 80th birthday party there last March but had to postpone it because his only sibling died the same week.
“We wouldn’t have the volunteers we have only for the likes of Andrew. You just couldn’t say ‘no’ to him,” O’Leary explains of a man who never even wanted to charge juveniles fees and regularly funded the club out of his own pocket.
“We eventually persuaded him they needed to pay €5 going away to matches, but sure once we stopped at McDonald’s on the way home Andrew was giving the kids the €5 back!” O’Leary chuckles.
“That was Andrew Drumm, he was just in it for the kids. He was at every training session and match he could make and he’d always go to the juveniles [game] before the seniors.”
Drumm’s legacy is writ large on the club which nowadays fields a dozen teams from U12 to Superleague and the family atmosphere he engendered possibly also contributes to its high quotient of female coaches.
O’Leary’s daughter Danielle and Irish captain Edel Thornton are not just key players for Sunday’s mouthwatering final against arch-rivals Fr Mathews (5:30pm). They are also, with Jodie Black, coaching their U20s against Waterford Wildcats tomorrow (Sat, 4:45pm).
“Most people who are coaching do it because their kids are involved but we have a lot of female coaches and their kids are gone or never played,” O’Leary observes.
Grace O’Sullivan preceded him as the club’s head coach. “And Sandie Fitzgibbon, an absolute legend [for Blarney basketball and Cork camogie], coached our juveniles for a few years. Her two sisters are still involved. Mary has coached our U14s for 20 years and Denise is coaching the U12s for probably as long.
“Lauryn Homan’s mother is a team manager and helps out on the committee. We have a lot of women involved which is great. The next generation, the kids that I coached 10 to 15 years ago, now have kids themselves and are coming back and getting involved. It’s a complete circle which is fantastic.”
Equally brilliant is Brunell’s current Superleague lead and 14-point semi-final ousting of defending National Cup champions Killester, especially given the hole they were peering into 12 months ago.
One of their Americans didn’t return after Christmas. The other got injured and, in their absence, Brunell narrowly bowed out of the cup and opted not to replace them but, finding themselves teetering towards relegation, they signed a third in time to win five of their last six games.
All the court-time their home-grown talent amassed then has stood to them, as has coach Liam Culloty’s loyalty.
“He got a hard deal with no Americans in his first year,” O’Leary notes. “He could have walked out just as easy as he walked in but he stuck with it and comes from Tralee two or three times a-week.”
In Williams and Johnson they recruited two marvellously athletic players willing to work their butts off at both ends and, in Thornton, they have a warrior queen.
Winner of MVP in both finals when they completed an U18/U20 cup double in 2015, their 5ft 7in point guard excelled in her US collegiate career and spent two years, for academic reasons, with Trinity Meteors before returning three years ago.
A dervish in defence, Thornton is also averaging 16 points per game. She broke her nose in their only loss of the season and the face-guard she’s still wearing embodies her fighting spirit.
Brunell regularly produced the goods at underage but have never won a major senior title and lost two cup finals in-a-row in 2019-2020, to Liffey Celtics and Killester respectively.
After so many years of playing second-fiddle to Glanmire, facing Fr Mathews in an all-Cork derby only adds fuel to their fire.
Their rivals, from Bishopstown, were only founded in 2002 and are first-time finalists. They include ex-Glanmire and Ireland stars Grainne and Niamh O’Dwyer and the latter was actually coaching them until a Masters’ game reignited her passion and prompted the mother of six-year-old twins to return to the paint this season.
Their league clash before Christmas was an absolute doozy. Two late Lauren Homan free throws snatched Brunell’s one-point victory so another humdinger is expected and Andrew Drumm’s niece Fiona and her husband Sean will be in the crowd.
A recipient of a Lifetime Achievement award from Basketball Ireland in 2019, he had no kids of his own but everyone agrees he quietly fathered generations of female ballers in Brunell and, even in passing, provides them with special motivation on the biggest weekend in their history.
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