Donegal’s Isabella O’Reilly excited for Euro Surf Junior Championships
Ballyshannon native hopes to reach finals in this year’s competition hosted in Bundoran
Local surfing sensation, Isabella O’Reilly, is hoping to display her best performances at the Euro Surf Junior 2026 championships, as she looks to add to her already glittering youth career.
Ballyshannon’s Isabella, a third-year student at Coláiste Cholmcille, is the home hope, as the surfing community descends on Bundoran for both the competition and the SALT WATER Festival.
The official opening ceremony will begin with a Parade of Nations through Bundoran on Saturday, September 26, kickstarting 10 days of fine competition from some of the best young surfers from across Europe.
The competition, along with Isabella’s surfing talents, is hoped to be a springboard for a career as successful as those of other surfers from South Donegal, such as Richie Fitzgerald and Conor Maguire, names that resonate in the surfing world.
In 2024, Isabella, the daughter of Brendan and Sinead of Dicey Reilly’s, won the national women’s senior surf, becoming the youngest ever senior champion in the process. She also garnered success at the European junior level, as she finished second in the U14 girls section of Europe’s premier surf festival held at Playa de Las Américas in Tenerife last year.
The 15-year-old said: “I am very excited for it, especially as it is at home and it is my first year in the team.”
When asked about her motivation entering the home tournament, Isabella replied: “I really want to enjoy myself, and I hope that I can make the finals, and then from there, I can hopefully go to try to win.”
Isabella has been surfing for over a decade, and laughs when she remembers her early lessons as a four-year-old, with Rossnowlagh resident Gavin McCrea, who is now the Performance and Strategy Director for Surfing Ireland.
“I first saw it on a TV show,” said Isabella. “I started when I was four years old with Gavin. I kept doing it every summer. Eventually I just wanted to do the surfing summer camps and not with the GAA summer camps.”
Gavin’s earliest memories of Isabella involved a surf lesson for the then toddler at Rossnowlagh.
“We used to set up on small waves, and we had to hold hands as she stood on the board,” remembered Shane. “But gradually, she let go.
“She was always cautious of falling off, but then she got it. We stayed in the shallows, waist-deep for her, but knee-deep for me.
“That was the first step of Isabella and her journey.”
The fear of ‘nose-diving’ was brought up by Isabella when she was younger, when the nose of the surfboard dips underwater as a wave is caught, usually pitching the unlucky surfer forward, nose-first, but Gavin countered: “They are the kind of things that make you as a surfer. They are the things that surfers are going to have to experience.”
Gavin, through his national team role, has positive ambitions not just for Isabella but for the whole Irish contingent competing.
“The hope for all the team is a podium finish and getting everybody in the finals,” commented Gavin.
“Isabella has good potential, is surfing well and is surfing on her home breaks, so if all things align and she gets the good heats, waves and conditions, we could see her in the final for sure.”
Being still a teenager, with hopes and ambitions of a professional career and competing some day in the Olympic Games, Isabella has different training complications than most budding sports stars.
She said: “I can explain that surfing is a different type of sport than a sport like swimming, where you will always have a swimming pool to train. For surfing, it depends on the best time that the waves come. But my school has given me an iPad so I can continue to study.
“I have a lot to thank my parents for. They drove me to every competition. They are always supporting me.”
For Gavin, in his senior position in Irish Surfing, he is not just hoping for a good performance from Isabella, but he also sees the event as important for the continued development of the sport.
The Euro Surf Junior Championships were last held in Bundoran in 2011, and the competition has been consistently held in Portugal since. It was Gavin who pitched the idea to relevant bodies to bring the competition back to Bundoran.
He said: “The importance of this in Bundoran is that it helps raise the profile of surfing across the county and country.
“It is for the kids to surf where they train and surf all the time. It is a real seal of approval of surfing.
“Bundoran has changed over the years, and the town has really embraced surfing so it is nice to give back to the town. It is good to showcase Donegal, Ireland, the waves and the Atlantic coast that we have.”
Attendees in Bundoran this week should watch with attention this week, knowing that if Isabella’s dreams do come true, they could soon be watching her hit the waves in Los Angeles in 2028, or Brisbane four years later, in an Irish Olympian team.