If you gave some 10-year-olds a bin of random sports equipment and told them to invent a game, they might come up with something like hurling. It’s like baseball, if everyone on the field had bats. The goals are like a cross between soccer and football. Certain aspects would be familiar to fans of lacrosse or rugby. But hurling isn’t derivative; it’s ancient, having been invented in Ireland some 3,000 years ago. The St. Louis Gaelic Athletic Club (stlhurling.com) teaches this peculiar sport to Midwesterners. “It’s the greatest sport that America doesn’t know about,” says local player and club member Mike Hertfelder.
• Traditionally, each team has 15 men, but the local club plays with fewer. Likewise, a standard hurling pitch is roughly 160 yards long and 100 yards wide, but the St. Louis club uses a smaller area.
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• The ball, called a sliotar, is hard like a baseball and about the same size, though its seams stick out more. Each player wears a helmet and carries a stick, called a hurley. The hurley has a handle at one end and a wide, flattened face at the other for striking the ball.
• A ball on the ground may not be picked up with a bare hand, but it may be kicked, hit with the hurley, or flicked up into the hand with the hurley. A ball in the air may be caught.
• A player may score the ball with the hurley or with a kick, but hand-passing into the goal is prohibited. After a score, the goalie initiates play with a free shot, humorously referred to as a puck-out.
• A player may take four steps with the ball in his hand, after which he has options: He may execute a hand pass, which is like a slap. He may hit the ball with the hurley. Or he may balance the ball on his hurley and carry it forward, a daring maneuver called a solo. Once a player switches the ball from his hand to his hurley, he may then transfer it back to his hand to take four more steps, though this may be done only once (for a maximum of eight steps with the ball in hand).
• The goals are, essentially, football uprights attached to the top of a soccer goal. A shot over the crossbar and between the goalposts, often smacked from long range like a baseball home run, scores one point. Putting the ball into the net, which is defended by a goaltender, is worth three.
• The game is divided into two 30-minute halves. The clock continues to run even when the ball goes out of play, and there are no timeouts.
• The game is physical, but overt violence will be whistled as a foul. The victim is then given a free, basically an open shot with his hurley.
