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Akron boasts state’s only hurling club
RICHARD WEINER
Legal News Reporter
Published: June 20, 2011
It is Ireland’s national sport. But very few Americans even get to see a hurling game, much less know what the sport is. Akron has a hurling club, and it is the only one in the state of Ohio.
“Hurling is the fastest sport on grass,” said Scott Cooper, spokesperson for the Akron Celtic Guards Hurling Club (ACGH; www.akronhurling.com). “It is a combination of field hockey, lacrosse, baseball, soccer and hockey.”
It is also traceable back in time at least 3,000 years.
In Ireland, every county has a hurling club, each with a farm system similar to professional baseball’s said Cooper. They play for locale and county pride. There is no place on earth, including Ireland, where hurling players get paid. Curling is a popular sport among anyone of Irish descent anywhere in the world.
The amateur status of this sport is true of all pure Gaelic sports, said Cooper, including camogie, which is the women’s version of hurling.
It is then also true in this country. The game requires a great deal of athleticism, and attracts athletes from other sports (Cooper was a soccer player). But it is a semi-pro level sport, which means that players essentially pay to join the club and play. The equipment can cost, and there is travel involved.
“We are the only team in the state, so we have to travel to get games,” said Cooper. The closest hurling club to Akron is in Pittsburgh.
Each team plays 15 players on the field. It is played on a pitch (field) which is 40 percent longer than the size of a soccer field.
The object of the game is for players to use a wooden stick called a hurley to hit a small ball called a sliotar (which looks a little like a baseball) between the opponents' goalposts. Over the goal posts produces one point; past the goal tender and into a net is worth three.
The players run around the field carrying or hitting the ball with the hurley, kind of like lacrosse, but a player can only take four steps with the ball before he or she has to pass it. This is done by throwing the ball up in the air and hitting it, sort of like in baseball practice, but the stick, said Cooper, is held cross-handed from baseball. Hand passes are also permitted.
The game is very fast and the ball also goes very fast. The players wear no protective equipment, so injuries do occur, said Cooper.
For the best way to see a hurling match, you would either need to go to one, or go to YouTube, where you would search for “the fastest game on grass,” to get a taste of the game.
To see one live, Cooper said that “we are on our field every Sunday from noon to four, March through November.” The club’s home field is next to Ganley Toyota on East Market, at 50 N. Johns Ave.
League play, which stretches all across the Midwest, is usually played on Saturdays. There are national championships. The Akron club won the most recent championship––2010 Men’s Junior C Hurling Shield, which was captured at the North American County Board (NACB) National Championships in Chicago, against 68 teams representing 27 cities across the U.S., as well as a team from Vancouver. Toronto also has a team.
ACGH, founded in 2002, has about 60 player-members, said Cooper. About 25 of them form the traveling squad. The rest are just casual, local players, he said. The sport is played locally like many adult softball leagues—with teams sponsored by local pubs in friendly competition, although all players are members of the ACGH.
Hurling does not have much of a college presence, but, said Cooper, the University of Akron is trying to put together a club team. He hopes that will attract more and more players.
Like in Ireland, each club plays local players. For this club, that includes the entire state of Ohio.
Cooper himself, now in his mid-30s, played “every sport, especially soccer” until about three years ago, when he discovered hurling. “Hurling is my favorite sport of them all,” he said. “I wish I had found it earlier.”