FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD all the way through college, all Stefan Desnica wanted was to be able to play basketball.
The six-foot-seven, 93kg forward, who will line out for DBS Éanna in pursuit of a national-cup title tonight (TG4, 8pm), has taken the scenic route to Tallaght.
Desnica grew up in Temerin, a suburb of Serbia’s second city of Novi Sad. He left home to complete secondary school in California and went on to attend university in South Dakota, playing high-level ball throughout his six years in the States — which was the whole point.
Later, even when reality had long since consumed his dream of playing pro ball, it was basketball which lured him back across the Atlantic, this time to Ireland.
“It’s not a bad spot to be at,” Desnica says.
The 25-year-old is the middle child of three brothers whose parents, Snezana and Darko, own a convenience store as well as a company which distributes drinks to pubs and restaurants. “That’s our little business that we try to take care of, try to keep going,” Desnica explains. “It’s pretty much my parents and my brothers running it and I try to help, then, as much as I can, in summers or whenever I have time off.”
He began high school in Novi Sad, last year’s European Capital of Culture and, since 1945, the capital of the now-autonomous province of Vojvodina. In Serbia, however, the road to pro basketball typically requires young players to take the first exit from their second-level education. Keen to finish school, Desnica instead took to the skies and enrolled in the San Gabriel Academy in Los Angeles, California.
“I moved out there on my own. It was a basketball move but it would allow me to finish my school degree as well.
“I had just turned 17 when I moved to America. It wasn’t easy but when you’re young… At that time, I didn’t really think about it too much until I actually landed in Los Angeles.
“And the thing is I didn’t really speak English at all so it was a big shock. I got off the plane and I’m like, ‘Oh… I’m screwed? What do I do now?’
“But it was alright: I had a great host family there in LA — a little older family, Richard and Cheryl Marquis, who took care of a few of us basketball players.
“Living with them and with other basketball players was a great help, especially with me and the language barrier. I was kind of shy, I didn’t want to talk to anyone much because I didn’t want people to laugh at me and stuff. But I had two Serbian guys living with me there and one Lithuanian roommate as well. So, it was a good time, definitely.”
During his couple of seasons with San Gabriel, Desnica averaged 15 points and seven rebounds per game. He was named in both the All-California Interscholastic Federation team and the All-Area team, and was recognised as an All-Westside honouree. His English came on a bit too: he was named San Gabriel’s team captain during his senior year.
His high-school output turned heads, ultimately earning him basketball scholarship to Black Hills State University (BHSU), an NCAA2 — or Division 2 — college in Spearfish, South Dakota.
“It was culture shock… again,” Desnica recalls of the move from LA to Spearfish, a town of 12,000-odd people best known for boasting the world record for a change in temperature (80 years ago tomorrow, the temperature in Spearfish rose from −20 °C to 7 °C in the space of two minutes, a record which still stands).
“In LA, a lot of people had been telling me, ‘Oh, don’t go out there. There are better offers coming your way, there’ll be better schools in California or around there.’
“But I took a visit up there, actually, and I realised that the coach there — Coach Jeff Trumbauer who offered me the scholarship — was very, very interested in signing me. So, I figured I better go to the place where people actually wanted me.
“There were also a lot of international players: there was one from Scotland; there was a kid from Denmark, from Sweden… So I didn’t mind joining them to have my college career there.”
During his freshman and sophomore years as a Finance undergraduate, Desnica and his fellow players were obligated to stay in dorms on the BHSU campus. For his junior and senior years, he and four of his Yellow Jackets teammates rented a house in the town. “It was great craic,” Desnica says, perhaps wisely leaving it at that.
There can’t have been too many distractions, mind: during his first year in the rented house, the Serbian was both named in the the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference’s (RMAC) All-Tournament team for his basketball performances and included in the All-RMAC Academic Honor Roll for his work in the lecture halls. He had earned the same academic award a year prior.
By the time he graduated, Desnica had long since accepted that a career in professional basketball was beyond him. Having played at a Division 2 college for the preceding four years, the 2020 NBA Draft didn’t even cross his mind.
It was time, instead, to leave basketball in his rearview and pursue a ‘normal’ job in America.
All of which might make you wonder why, just two and a half years further down the road, Desnica is preparing to do battle with the University of Galway Maree for the Pat Duffy Cup in Tallaght this Saturday evening.
“That’s a great question,” he laughs. “I ask myself that every day too, actually!
“My thoughts at the time were just around America and that basketball was finished for me. But then Coach Derek McGovern approached me with the proposal to come and play with DBS Éanna and work on my Masters here in Dublin.
“It was during the start of Covid, as well, when there wasn’t much going on. And I was certainly thinking: ‘I might as well go and do my Masters, at least, in these Covid times’ — just so I wouldn’t be stuck doing nothing.
“So I came here but I didn’t really get to see much in 2020 of Ireland or Dublin at all. We were waiting on news of the basketball season, ‘Maybe it will happen, maybe it won’t.’ And then in December they cancelled it so I decided, ‘Okay, that’s it for me here. I’ll go and work on my Masters from home in Serbia. It was all remote anyway.”
After completing that Dublin Business School Masters in Fintech, or Financial Technology, Desnica returned to Ireland in the summer of 2021.
An internship with Jacobs Engineering quickly morphed into a full-time job, one which Desnica glowingly attributes to former BHSU Yellow Jackets ‘booster’ — or sponsor — Arlen Emmert.
Emmert, with whom Desnica forged “a great connection” over four years in Spearfish (Emmert chose to personally fund the Serbian’s basketball scholarship), was long retired but had at one point run Jacobs’ Irish operations from Dublin during his 30-plus years with the company. He had retained an interest in Desnica’s career even after the BHSU graduate had left America, and duly put in a few transatlantic calls for his protégé.
With work sorted, Desnica was finally able to return to the basketball court with his Éanna teammates in September 2021 — but then came another twist, and a painful one at that: the forward tore his ACL in just Éanna’s second game of the season, against Templeogue in mid-October.
It was faster for him to get the requisite surgery back home in Serbia and he remained there for his months-long rehab process, working remotely before returning to Dublin once more.
“I’m back here for the third time and the third time’s a charm, so… hopefully it all works out now!” Desnica says.
At last, he’s had the chance in recent months to immerse himself in a full Irish basketball season, and to experience first-hand the work of the people in this country who share his lifelong passion for the sport.
“Maybe the most interesting thing that I’ve found while playing basketball here is that the community is so small,” Desnica says.
When you say to people in Ireland that you play basketball, most of them look at you almost like, ‘What is wrong with you?’ Sometimes I feel like if you don’t play Gaelic here, you shouldn’t really say that you play sports! But then, the actual basketball people are very, very, extra passionate.
“There is a larger basketball community in Serbia but I would say that most of those people don’t have the same passion for basketball as the people involved in the sport in Ireland.
The whole infrastructure of basketball isn’t really as developed here, so it is the people who meet that challenge and manage to keep the basketball going, y’know?
“And I can see, actually, the growth; even since I came here in 2020, I notice the difference. I think it has grown significantly. Just looking at the way Basketball Ireland operates, the media days before the finals and things like that. The growth is there.”
Darren McGovern’s Éanna side sent defending champions Garvey’s Tralee Warriors packing in their cup curtain-raiser before taking out two in-form Cork outfits, Energywise Ireland Neptune and Emporium Cork Basketball, en route to tonight’s showpiece.
Desnica and teammates will face Charlie Crowley’s University of Galway Maree side who have cruised into the final at the expense of Flexachem KCYMS, Belfast Star and Bright St. Vincent’s, none of whom could get within an ass’s roar of them.
At the final buzzer tonight, there will be a first-time winner of the Pat Duffy Cup: Éanna, competing in their second final in three years, are seeking their first title in their current form (founded in 2005, they amalgamated in 2009 with Notre Dame, four-in-a-row winners between 1997 and 2000), while Maree have made it to their first ever cup decider.
Before either the joy or the despair of that buzzer, though, comes the buzz.
“I’m so excited to get this opportunity to play in the final,” Desnica gushes.
“Obviously, all week, we still have to wake up and do our regular routines, go to work and things like that. But the final is definitely in the back of our heads all the time.
“Even the people where I work, I guess at the beginning they didn’t know much about basketball but now, they’ve read a few articles and they’re asking, ‘Are you ready for the final?’ And all of this stuff.
“Preparation-wise, it’s about the same routine, same practices, same workouts. That’s what’s got us here and, hopefully, that’s what’s going to get us the trophy as well.”
