First ever US national college hurling finals

Eamonnca1 · March 24, 2011, 11:59:19 PM

The NCGAA announces the first ever National College Hurling Finals to be held at Chicago's Gaelic Park on Memorial Day weekend, 2011.

There will be two competitions running in parallel:

A collegiate competition between UC Berkeley, Indiana and Purdue who are sending full teams. Round robin format, top two teams go to final. Any ties in the round robin will be settled by scoring differences.
An East v West competition to be contested by select teams made up of players who may be from other colleges that cannot send full teams. Best-of-three format.

Schedule (subject to adjustments):

Saturday May 28th

10:00am UC Berkeley v. Indiana
11:30am East v. West Game 1
1:00pm Purdue v. UC Berkeley
2:30pm Indiana v. Purdue

Sunday May 29th

10:00am East v. West Game 2
12:00am National Collegiate Final
3:00pm East v. West Game 3 (if needed)

More...

Fear ón Srath Bán · March 25, 2011, 12:05:46 AM

Excellent!

mayogodhelpus@gmail.com · March 25, 2011, 12:08:52 AM

Very good.

thejuice · March 25, 2011, 09:16:09 AM

Fantastic, hopefully it will grow from there. Collegiate sports seem to be 'the' place for American sports. Adult amateur sports don't seem to get any attention

AZOffaly · March 25, 2011, 09:40:12 AM

Great stuff, and great idea. If you can get into the colleges, and especially those into the mid west and east coast, then the potential for growth is huge. Eamonn, did anyone contact colleges like Boston U, BC, Notre Dame etc? Also some Div II colleges like Saint Mary's, Holy Cross, etc?

Denn Forever · March 25, 2011, 11:32:08 AM

Saturday May 28th

10:00am UC Berkeley v. Indiana
11:30am East v. West Game 1
1:00pm Purdue v. UC Berkeley
2:30pm Indiana v. Purdue

I wonder will Sigerson/Fitzgibbon use this compressed format? Two games in the one day!

Fair play to all the players taking part.

AZOffaly · March 25, 2011, 01:06:16 PM

Quote from: Denn Forever on March 25, 2011, 11:32:08 AM
Saturday May 28th

10:00am UC Berkeley v. Indiana
11:30am East v. West Game 1
1:00pm Purdue v. UC Berkeley
2:30pm Indiana v. Purdue

I wonder will Sigerson/Fitzgibbon use this compressed format? Two games in the one day!

Fair play to all the players taking part.

Purdue Boilermakers are getting the shaft a bit

Berkley and the Hoosiers get an hour and a half off after each game.

laoisgaa · March 25, 2011, 01:08:17 PM

Looking forward to going to this - I've been planning my trip since last November!

Eamonnca1 · March 25, 2011, 06:19:28 PM

Quote from: AZOffaly on March 25, 2011, 09:40:12 AM
Great stuff, and great idea. If you can get into the colleges, and especially those into the mid west and east coast, then the potential for growth is huge. Eamonn, did anyone contact colleges like Boston U, BC, Notre Dame etc? Also some Div II colleges like Saint Mary's, Holy Cross, etc?

Doesn't quite work like that, it's not something you can "push" into colleges like you can do in primary and secondary school. At college level it has to come from the students themselves because club sports* at US colleges are student-led activities. I know that Notre Dame had a hurling team years ago which went by the wayside, but it's being revived now thanks to this current wave of college hurling. That said, it's spreading pretty quickly thanks to social networking. In my day you went to Uni and lost contact with your old school friends, but nowadays they're staying in touch and sharing videos and everything with their friends who have gone off to different colleges and are inspired to start clubs there. Our job is to be on hand to help them get started up.

Also this year we're printing a ton of brochures to give to kids who are playing in their final season of U18. The brochure tells them how to keep playing Gaelic games when they go to college, i.e. find a club on your campus, and if there isn't one there then start one by following the step-by-step instructions on the NCGAA website.

*Club sports are not to be confused with varsity sports. Varsity sports are the big time stuff that gets heavy funding from colleges and commands huge local and TV audiences. Attendances of 100,000 at college American football games are not uncommon. Broadcasting rights for live coverage are not cheap.

Eamonnca1 · March 25, 2011, 06:23:29 PM

Quote from: AZOffaly on March 25, 2011, 01:06:16 PM
Quote from: Denn Forever on March 25, 2011, 11:32:08 AM
Saturday May 28th

10:00am UC Berkeley v. Indiana
11:30am East v. West Game 1
1:00pm Purdue v. UC Berkeley
2:30pm Indiana v. Purdue

I wonder will Sigerson/Fitzgibbon use this compressed format? Two games in the one day!

Fair play to all the players taking part.

Purdue Boilermakers are getting the shaft a bit Berkley and the Hoosiers get an hour and a half off after each game.

Yup, it's a good point. We'll probably push that last game back a bit, maybe get some of the local Chicago hurling clubs (youth or adult) to come along and play a challenge match in that slot instead to give the Purdue boys some time to recover.

redandblack4ever · March 25, 2011, 11:29:17 PM

I'm sure two of the hurling clubs in Chicago will make sure that they get a game. I just hope the weather cooperates.

It usually pours down rain on Gaelic Park's Irish Fest or it's so cold, you need your winter coat to just walk around.

In all the year's it's been on, I only remember one where the weather really cooperated and it was so hot, GP had their money made by Saturday night. What they made on Sunday and Monday was all gravy....

DrinkingHarp · March 26, 2011, 04:59:28 AM

Quote from: thejuice on March 25, 2011, 09:16:09 AM
Fantastic, hopefully it will grow from there. Collegiate sports seem to be 'the' place for American sports. Adult amateur sports don't seem to get any attention

To expand on Eamonnca1's response to AZ

Any sport not on the official program of a college program will have to be a club. Most universities/colleges have only "x" amount of sporting teams that are allowed to be part of the NCAA depending on enrollment, budget and sanctions. Some programs do not have a football, soccer, baseball, softball, track team etc. Men and womens teams have to be equal for both sexes ( 8 teams for men 8 for women).
Now most big schools cover almost every sport for both sexes but the mid to smaller schools have limited teams for "official teams".
That brings in the "club" aspect of college sports teams, were students form their own teams with an academic sponsor (usually the cool prof. on campus), own funds and such.
When I was at college I played on the Ice Hockey team and Rugby team. Ice hockey cost me around 1200 a season just to join because renting ice time at a rink is expensive. Rugby cost about 300. Teams are run by the students participating on each team.

Here is a good link on club sports in colleges in the sates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collegiate_Club_Sports

I could see both hurling and football being big club sports on campuses across the states but would need a big grass movement from the North American GAA to help push it. If local boards put on exhibition matches on campuses the students could see the action and want to start playing.

Students who played american football/soccer in high school would enjoy playing football for the hitting, kicking aspects of the game.
Students who played ice hockey/baseball in high school would enjoy hurling for the similar aspects of using a Hurley to a bat or hockey stick.

And if the parties after a match were fantastic you would get more students interested. A part of college is parties and when we had a rugby match you might get 100-200 to watch (mostly girlfriends and buddies of team) but when the party started after the match anywhere from 300 to 900 college students would show up just for the party. I know drinking is not part of the sport or why people play but on a college campus that is what students are looking for.

AZOffaly · March 26, 2011, 09:26:58 AM

Yeah lads, that's what I meant, pushing it through the NACB into colleges by trying to get clubs to play. I'm well aware of the difference between official teams, and the rule 8(?) about mens and womens for official 'sports'. I did live there for 4 years remember

I played football over there, and played in NACB finals. We had minor teams and everything from all across the country, and most of them were obviously born and bred Americans. I was thinking even back then that there was a seed there to expand into the high schools and colleges.

FL/MAYO · March 27, 2011, 01:20:14 PM

Quote from: AZOffaly on March 26, 2011, 09:26:58 AM
Yeah lads, that's what I meant, pushing it through the NACB into colleges by trying to get clubs to play. I'm well aware of the difference between official teams, and the rule 8(?) about mens and womens for official 'sports'. I did live there for 4 years remember

I played football over there, and played in NACB finals. We had minor teams and everything from all across the country, and most of them were obviously born and bred Americans. I was thinking even back then that there was a seed there to expand into the high schools and colleges.

We had a Floridian lad take up football with us about 15 years ago. He ended up marrying a Tyrone girl and moving back there to live, he is still playing club football in Tyrone.

Eamonnca1 · May 31, 2011, 07:10:54 PM

Well it was a roaring success!

Weather messed things up a bit and the schedule had to be adjusted, but all the games that had to be played got played. We had to take out some of the East v West games because of dangerous lightning. In the collegiate competition Purdue fell a few points short of qualifying for the final. Indiana beat Cal in the final by 4 points. Good standard of hurling too, good enough that you could bring an audience and keep them entertained.

In the East-West games we just kept it informal and didn't present a cup or anything, the purpose of that was to get game time for less-experienced players and anyone who came from a college that could only send a handful of players. If you put up a cup then sometimes the coaches start taking it more seriously and they're less inclined to play inexperienced players, which would defeat the purpose. So only one East West game was played, but the Purdue team and a handful of other players got a challenge match in against the local Chicago Michael Cusack's club.

There was supposed to be a youth hurling demo for a few hours but that had to be cancelled too, the main field was going to get churned up too much and the lightning kept flashing away.

We were very lucky to get the final in. There was a field that hadn't yet been full of cars parking for the Irish Fest, so we commandeered it and got the final played during a break in the storm when it actually stopped raining.

Round-robin results:

University of California Berkeley 4-4 (16) Indiana University 3-8 (17)
Purdue University 3-11 University of California Berkeley 3-11 (AET!)
Indiana University 3-9 (18) Purdue University 2-5 (11)

Final:
Indiana University 3-4 (13) University of California Berkeley 1-6 (9)

No red cards, no fighting, good clean sporting games and good cooperation from all the players, coaches and officials.

I must give a shout out to the Chicago GAA community, they really threw their weight behind this and gave us all the help we needed with facilities, referees, officials and everything. Couldn't ask for more hospitable hosts.

Congrats to Indiana, the first college in the USA to put their name on a GAA cup for an inter-collegiate national championship.