Maccabi Karmiel Women

Karmiel begin the 2026/27 season in the Ligat Ha'Al, the top tier of Israeli women's basketball, under head coach Daniella Ra'avan and her assistant Katya Abramson. Home games are played in the Horowitz Arena, a 500-seat hall. Some of the roster arrived with the merger; among them are Yael Toito, Liel Eisenstat and Ayellet Segal, and the American Draiyona Lewis is on it too.

The team in the league now, Maccabi Karmiel Beit HaKerem, exists because two clubs needed each other. In July 2025 the local Maccabi women, who had spent their years in the lower divisions, merged with A.S. Ramat HaSharon. Ramat HaSharon was a club from 1986 with real weight behind it: six league titles between 1999 and 2010, six State Cups, a Ronchetti Cup final in 1999 and a EuroCup Final Four in 2005. The Israel Basketball Association approved the merger, and the side made its Ligat Ha'Al debut that September.

Those trophies belong to Ramat HaSharon's story, and the merged club does not claim a title of its own. What it brought to the north was a place in the top flight, and the north had nothing comparable to offer. The Maccabi women had no top-tier history to bring, and the men's club, founded in 1980, could not supply one for them.

The nearest rival is Maccabi Haifa, down the road, and games against them carry local weight.

Carmiel had been here before. Nirsoft Karmiel played in the top division from 1998 to 2002, with Moran Samuel among its players, and then dissolved. After that the city had 23 years without top-level women's basketball.