Emotional week for Portlaoise Panthers as they part ways with 'inspirational' Jessica

PORTLAOISE Panthers, last week, bid farewell to one of their most influential players in Jessica Fressle, who returned home to the United States after four years with the club.

The American not only played a hugely significant role in the club’s promotion to the Women’s Super League ranks in her very first season here, but also enhanced a strong connection with the community by way of coaching various juvenile teams, running camps and her huge work with the Basketball4All Inclusion Group.

For Fressle, while parting ways with Panthers and the town of Portlaoise was very difficult, the experience of starting and ending her professional basketball career with the club has been very special.

“As an American, it's a bit different,” she told the Laois Nationalist. “The four years I had in Portlaoise are four extra years that most people don't get. I think the statistic is that one per cent of American high school players get to play college basketball, and, when you think about that, it's about 0.01% get to play professional basketball.

“So this has always been an extra for me. I knew that I was never going to settle in Ireland as a whole, so I did make this decision before the season even started.

“I knew this would be my last year because I need to figure out my life in New York now or the east coast in general and see what's next for me.

“Most of the team knew as well and the community too, but it was still very sad. There were a lot of tears over the past week or so, and all the way up to the airport.

“Portlaoise was really great at helping me settle in. That first year was super significant and it set the foundation for me to stay three more years after that.

“I was living with a host family in Portlaoise that had nothing to do with basketball and they were amazing.

“And then through that, I also became close with a lot of families in the club and I just felt so welcomed between the team and the community.

“The basketball gave me the people and gave me the opportunities, but the community really let me be who I wanted to be.

“They let me bring my experience in special education from the States and change things around our inclusion team and inspire girls in that way,” she said.

Fressle certainly did not waste any time in making her presence felt at Panthers when she joined the club back in 2022, helping them land the Division One crown and, with it, promotion to Super League in her very first year.

Indeed, that victory over St Paul’s Killarney in the divisional title match remains one of the biggest stand-out memories for the American in her time with the club.

“Winning the championship, not only for the club, but for the girls and for myself, was so amazing,” she recalled.

“I had never won a championship before and it had always been a goal and a dream of mine. So then to move across the Atlantic Ocean and to do that for them was definitely the most special memory of the four years.

“I always say that that day was one of the best days of my life. I ended up getting MVP and it was just all the things I had alwa

ys dreamed of doing. So to do it for them and the community was really special,” she said.

Competing against the big guns in Irish basketball, Portlaoise have managed to maintain their Super League status over the past three years, even reaching the play-off quarter-finals following a fifth-place finish in 2024/25 regular season.

And Fressle insists those years, where survival was the primary objective, have helped lay the groundwork for, what she hopes, will be even more successful seasons ahead.

“Rome wasn't built in a day, and building a successful programme is not going to happen overnight,” she stressed.

“In the grand scheme of things, three years is not a very long time. You look at the top teams, like Killester and Glanmire, they've been building in Super League for over a decade, and so it's going to take time.

“The goal really was how can we build, how can we develop the players coming underneath us and how can we hopefully stay in Super League. Obviously we wanted to compete, but we understand the reality of development, of what's coming up behind us.

“And so, at the end of the day, moving forward is going to be up to our senior Irish players to continue to help develop the younger players and to keep us in Super League, because those players look up to us and, right now, they're dreaming of being a Portlaoise Panthers Super League player some day.

“You want to keep that dream alive for them so that they have that drive to get there,” she said.

Fressle has certainly proven a hugely inspirational figure for the emerging players in Portlaoise, and one person who fully appreciates the huge impact she has made is Portlaoise Super League team manager, Lynda Scully, who remarked “We've just had the most magnificent four years with Jessica, both on and off the court.

“From the time she arrived here, she literally made Portlaoise her home. She settled right into the National League team, she also got involved with underage training, she got involved with our all-inclusion team and started doing camps.

“She's the utmost professional on the court. It doesn't matter if she's feeling sad, feeling homesick, which all pros do. At the end of the day, she still gives it her all.

“She's been just so inspirational and we're really going to miss her. She's off to, hopefully, get her career in teaching in the States and we wish her nothing but the best, because she's given us nothing but the best,” she said.