Belfast

Basketball was not the reason Dr Liam Conlon founded the Star of the Sea Youth Club in 1964. The team grew inside a youth club, and it was 1983 before it entered the All-Ireland League. The name Belfast Star came only in 2007, when the club had long been a basketball operation in all but title.

The results arrived in the 1990s, in a run. The Irish National Championship came in 1996 and 1997, and in 1998 the club won it a third time. That same year it also took the Irish National League, and it repeated the league win in 1999. Then came a gap of more than two decades.

The next league title, in 2020, arrived with two individual awards. Delaney Blaylock was named Player of the Year, and Adrian Fulton was named Coach of the Year. The club had gone twenty-one years without a league title, and it won this one with a player and a coach both recognised in the same season.

Home games moved from De La Salle College to the Newforge Sports Complex, where Newforge Arena holds 600. The club now plays in the Irish Super League, and Newforge Arena is where it tries to add a fourth league title to the three it already has.