Amanda O'Regan enjoyed a superb basketball career as well as tasting All-Ireland glory

Amanda O'Regan will go down in Cork sporting history as one of the best dual players Cork has ever seen in terms of her success on the court and on the pitch.

Her two sports were camogie and basketball. In both, the Douglas native was part of incredible teams that had incredible success.

I recently wrote a piece about Amanda O’Regan’s wonderful camogie career, however, she has also had just an amazing basketball career and won every honour in the game.

She won five Super League titles, five National Cup titles, and six National Championship titles with Glanmire. 

Then, O’Regan went on to win a Division 1 National League, Cup and NICC Cup with Fr Mathew's. 

Amanda also won three inter-varsity titles with UL and recently a World Championships Bronze medal with the Ireland O40 Masters team, a team which she captained.

O’Regan started playing basketball with Blarney Basketball Club when she was 15 years old. 

After picking up a ACL injury, she joined Glanmire to play National League in 2002. 

She stayed with Glanmire for 14 years before transferring to Fr Mathew's where she is still playing locally, and won a NICC National Cup title a few weeks ago. 

However, she gets huge enjoyment now playing for the Irish Masters team in the different tournaments around the world.

“I had a great basketball career with Glanmire before I moved to Fr Mathew’s for convenience, mainly because I was already driving two hours a day for work,” Amanda said.

“Fr Mathew's was only a 10-minute drive to training, so it suited me better, and I was also coming to the end of my career, so I felt that a step down in grade made sense."

Amanda retired from basketball in 2020, and suffered a hip injury shortly afterwards, however, the lure of playing competitive again with Masters basketball gave her the appetite to tread the hardwood again.

“I retired from basketball at the end of the 2020 season and then had hip surgery. 

"Rehab after surgery kept me busy for a while, but then I started to miss playing and having the structure of training and being with the teams. "While I enjoyed gym work, it didn't come close to playing sport. 

RECOVERY IS KEY

"I started back into Masters basketball in 2022 thinking I'd just play for fun, and it was ok for a while. 

"Now I have the opportunity to play with women that I would have competed against over the years. 

"The first days of trials were fun trying to figure out how we knew each other and when we would have played against each other. 

"We've been to Italy and Switzerland in the last two years and next summer, hopefully I will be part of the team for Athens, Greece. 

Age brings its own challenges, but I have now got better at listening to my body. 

"I must spend longer at warm-ups before games and my recovery afterwards is key.

“One of favourite moments recently in basketball was probably our masters game against Austria at the Europeans in 2024. 

"It was a group game with the winner qualifying for the quarter-final. The Austrians had several ex-pros playing. 

"The atmosphere throughout the game was up there with any cup final that I had played in. 

"Winning the NICC Cup title last month was also special. 

"It's a bonus medal for me as I had retired years ago and accepted that I wouldn't have these opportunities again. 

"Most of the girls this year had not won cup modals before and their excitement was infectious.

"It felt like I was winning for the first time again."

O’Regan is very grateful to all her coaches, in both sports, and praises them for trusting her so she could play at the highest level in both codes for so long.

“I was lucky that I've had coaches that were understanding and flexible with my schedule. 

"They trusted me to be there when I could and knew that I wouldn't take advantage of the situation. 

"If I had a light week for one sport, I'd do the pre-season with the other, or for example, during basketball season, I might do hurling drills at camogie, but not the hard running. 

"It also helped that my parents were involved on the camogie side, so we could avoid clashes most of the time.

“My advice to any young players is to keep communicating with your coaches and be honest with them. 

"Organisation is key, so if you are aware of games you have in one sport, let the other coach know in plenty time so that they know you either won't be available or they can try to avoid the dates. 

"It's not always easy, especially in team sports, as you have to work around so many people, but coaches do appreciate knowing what's going on. "It can mean missing out on other things like meeting up with friends and it can be difficult to organise holidays around games, but that's the sacrifice you must make, but I never felt that it was a sacrifice,” O’Regan added.

"It was what I wanted to do."