Tapiolan Honka Women

Before it was a basketball club, Tapion Honka was a general sports society in Espoo. That was in 1957. Basketball did not split off as its own concern until 1975, when it became Koripallo Honka, and the club did not settle on the name it carries now, Tapiolan Honka, until 1985.

The men's section built the early identity: five league titles between 1968 and 1972 and two cups in the same stretch. The women's game has followed a different path — silver medals in the Naisten Korisliiga rather than the top step, built instead on the players it has sent through. Kia Vaalavirta made her first-team debut at fifteen.

Espoo has room for two clubs, and Honka shares it with EspooBasket Team. The rivalry has no derby name attached to it, just the fact of two sides drawing from the same city. Honka's own recruiting has looked further afield: Brady Morningstar wore the shirt in 2013, Kiana Johnson across 2017-18, and the club has already lined up Chelsea Waters and Tess Barnes for coming seasons, alongside Finnish internationals such as Annika Holopainen and Roosa Lehtoranta.

Home games are played in a hall that holds 1,570. What the women's side has not done, in the record available, is turn those silver medals into a championship of its own.