Team revives ancient sport

“Imagine hockey with all its speed, passion and intensity, but played on grass with a ball that can be hit 100 mph.”

This is how IU Gaelic Hurling Club coach Tim Fick describes the game. Gaelic hurling, commonly referred to as “hurling,” is a fast-paced sport that is taking place across the country.

Hurling is played with two 15-player teams on a field about the size of a soccer field, though the number of players tends to shrink as the size of the field played on does. The game is also played co-ed, though no women have come to play on IU’s team so far.

Players use hurleys, wooden sticks that look like blunt axes, to hit a sliotar, a ball that is the size of baseball but slightly lighter. Any time the sliotar is in the air, a player can catch it and move up to four steps. The player can then move while keeping the sliotar balanced or hopping on the hurley or hitting the sliotar with the hurley to another teammate.

The goal is to hit the sliotar through one of the two goals at opposite ends of the field. They are as high as a soccer goal, with uprights sticking up further on the sides. If players get the sliotar through the bottom goal, they get one point, but if they get it to go above the bottom goal between the uprights, they get three points.

“There is something basic and elemental about hurling, and it has nonstop action,” Fick said.

Despite the constant action and swinging hurleys, the sport gives out few serious injuries. Mostly, players can expect bloody knuckles or sliotar bruises, though team member Alex Chesterfield said he always likes to talk about the time he got a concussion. This is a rare injury, though, as the players all wear helmets.

Hurling, Fick said, can be traced back thousands of years. The Celts brought the sport with them to Ireland, he said, and an oral tale of a hurling hero has been estimated to be at least 2,500 years old.

“Hurling was used to train warriors,” Fick said. “It had a warfare mentality without the killing.”

Villages would even use hurling as a diplomatic solution. When land disputes arose between two villages, every man, woman and child would join in a game, and the winning village won the argument.

Today, hurling is Ireland’s most-played sport, though it is little-known in North America. In fact, there are no companies in the United States that manufacture sliotars, so the team must get them from Ireland. Hockey is said to have been created out of hurling, when Irish immigrants adapted their native game to the Canadian landscape.

Team member Chris Cox said he began hurling when he was a junior in high school.

Cox said he loves the physicality of hurling, as players can shoulder each other as long as they are going after the ball. He also said he loves the aspect of teamwork. The four-step-only rule keeps any one player from carrying the team.

“I also like how the sport is played by amateurs only, so it’s all for the love of the game,” Cox said. “There are no pros in hurling.”

Several of the team’s members, including Cox, play for a team based in Indianapolis that has only recently been formed but is a contender in national competitions. Fick said he attributes some of this success to the Indianapolis team’s several Irish members, who, as he said, “really know how the game is supposed to be played.”

Purdue also has a hurling club and is the only other school in the Midwest that does. As such, it is the only team that IU has played in the last several years. Fick, though, suspects that the sport will gain fame.

“I think this is the beginning of something that will be big on college campuses,” Fick said. “Half the battle, though, is raising awareness.”