David Cullen (born 1969) is a Northern Irish former basketball player who currently assists the organisation Crossover Basketball with its work in Northern Ireland.
Dave also works with Ormeau Road Boxing Club as Secretary and Fundraiser.
Cullen was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He attended and worked for Queen's University Belfast.
Dave started playing basketball in the senior leagues for Team Smithwicks at 16 years old, but had to pretend he was 18 to be available for selection. He them moved to Star of the Sea at age 20 who compete in the Irish Super League, the top level of basketball in Ireland which involves professional players brought in from America.
At age 25, David moved to the newly founded Queens Basketball Club. He also enrolled as a mature student at Queen's, which enabled him to play for the varsities team. This led to David twice representing the Northern Ireland Universities basketball team at the BUCS games. It was through the varsity team that David met Sean Tuohey and became involved with Peace Players International (formally Playing For Peace). David is currently the general manager/Coach of Belfast Tropics. Dave and his wife Kerry live in South Belfast with their four children.
Cullen has signed for new team Belfast Cranes for the 2014–15 season.
David is the organiser of the largest pre-season basketball tournament in Northern Ireland, The Queen's Invitational Basketball Tournament [1] [2] [3] (formerly known as the Errigle Inn Invitational tournament). The Tournament has been up and running for over 5 years now and clubs such as Star of the Sea, Tolka Rovers and North Star Basketball Club have lifted the trophy. Teams from England, Cyprus and America have attended the competition. In 2008 Cleveland Cavaliers general manager Danny Ferry helped finance the Cyprus team's trip to Belfast to participate in the tournament. In 2010 the tournament sponsored by ESPN was won by the Belfast Tropics.
On Wednesday 11 July 2007, David Cullen and Trevor Ringland received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the 2007 ESPY awards [4] [5] for their work with PeacePlayers International.
Previous recipients of the Award include Muhammad Ali, Dean Smith, Billie Jean King, Tommie Smith and John Carlos and in 2009 Nelson Mandella.
Belfast is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel. It is second to Dublin as the largest city on the island of Ireland with a population in 2021 of 345,418 and a metro area population of 671,559.
The Queen's University of Belfast, commonly known as Queen's University Belfast, is a public research university in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. The university received its charter in 1845 as "Queen's College, Belfast", and opened four years later.
PeacePlayers International is a non-profit organization which uses the game of basketball to unite and educate children and their communities.
Q Radio is a Northern Irish radio station. It broadcasts to Greater Belfast on 96.7 MHz FM and on DAB Digital Radio across all of Northern Ireland. From 5 April 2007, Citybeat became available on 102.5FM for North Belfast, Newtownabbey and Carrickfergus. On 2 November 2007, Citybeat launched a third FM transmitter also broadcasting on 102.5FM for Bangor. Citybeat reaches a weekly audience of 127,000 listeners in Belfast, around 22% of the adult population. It has won both Arqiva 'Station of the Year' and Sony Awards. The station was rebranded as Q Radio on-air at 6pm on Sunday 9 August 2015.
Ormeau Park is the oldest municipal park in Belfast, Northern Ireland, having been officially opened to the public in 1871. It is owned and run by Belfast City Council and is one of the largest and busiest parks in the city and contains a variety of horticulture, woodland, wildlife and sporting facilities.
Trevor Maxwell Ringland, is a Northern Irish solicitor, former rugby union player and unionist politician. From June 2013 to July 2014, he served as co-chairman of the NI Conservatives. After attending Larne Grammar School, he read law at Queen's University Belfast.
Carál Ní Chuilín, formerly known as Caroline Cullen, is an Irish Sinn Féin politician and former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) volunteer serving as the Principal Deputy Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly since 2024. She has been a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast North since 2007 and served in the Northern Ireland Executive as Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure until 2016. On 15 June 2020, she was appointed Minister for Communities on a temporary basis, due to the health of the previous minister, Deirdre Hargey.
The Arthur Ashe Courage Award is presented as part of the ESPY Awards. It is named for the American tennis player Arthur Ashe. Although it is a sport-oriented award, it is not limited to sports-related people or actions, as it is presented annually to individuals whose contributions "transcend sports". According to ESPN, the organization responsible for giving out the award, "recipients reflect the spirit of Arthur Ashe, possessing strength in the face of adversity, courage in the face of peril and the willingness to stand up for their beliefs no matter what the cost". The award was presented as part of the ESPY Awards ceremony at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles from 2008 to 2019. The 2020 ESPYs ceremony was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the Ashe Award being one of the few awards presented, and the 2021 ceremony was held in New York City.
Ormeau Road is a road in south Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland. Ormeau Park is adjacent to it. It forms part of the A24.
Sport in Northern Ireland plays an important role in the lives of many Northern Irish people. Most sports are organised on an all-Ireland basis, for example rugby union, Gaelic games, basketball, rugby league, hockey, and cricket, whereas others, like association football and netball are organised on a separate basis for Northern Ireland.
Taughmonagh is a small housing estate in south west Belfast, Northern Ireland, within the civil parishes of Drumbeg and Shankill, and barony of Belfast Upper. Taughmonagh has become known for being a staunchly loyalist estate.
Ulster Football Club is a defunct Irish association football club that was based in Ballynafeigh, Belfast.
Queen's University Belfast Rugby Football Club is the rugby union team of Queen's University Belfast, currently playing in Division 2A of the All-Ireland League. Founded in 1869, it is the most successful and oldest continuous rugby union club in Northern Ireland. They originally played as Queen's College, Belfast and have won the Ulster Senior Cup a record 23 times.
North of Ireland Football Club is a former Irish rugby union club that was based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It was the first rugby club formed in what is now Northern Ireland and only two other clubs - Dublin University and Wanderers - were formed earlier anywhere else in all Ireland. It was founded in 1868 by members of North of Ireland Cricket Club. NIFC also played in the first recorded rugby game in Ulster when they played a 20-a-side match against Queen's University RFC.
Dennis Kennedy is a writer on Irish and European affairs. His most recent publications include Square Peg; The Life and Times of a Northern Newspaperman South of the Border, Nonsuch, November 2009, and Climbing Slemish: An Ulster Memoir.
Coleraine Academical Institution was a voluntary grammar school for boys in Coleraine, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland.
Pottinger was one of the nine district electoral areas (DEA) in Belfast, Northern Ireland from 1985 to 2014. Located in the east of the city, the district elected six members to Belfast City Council and contained the wards of Ballymacarrett, Bloomfield, Orangefield, Ravenhill, The Mount, and Woodstock.
The Red Lion Pub bombing was a bomb attack on 2 November 1971 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Planted by the Provisional IRA, it exploded in the Red Lion pub on Ormeau Road, killing three people and injuring about 30 others. The IRA members had given customers less than ten seconds to flee the building. Police said the target was the neighbouring Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) station.