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Little Rock Gaelic Athletic Associaion


Stormcrow

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Since I've been hyping a rugby team in NWA I have nothing to do with, I figured I might as well hype my pet project going on in Little Rock:

Little Rock Rangers Gaelic Athletic Association

Little Rock GAA is devoted to promoting and playing the Irish sports of Gaelic football and hurling in Little Rock and the rest of Arkansas. Gaelic football is the first sport we are recruiting for. It resembles a full contact (but non-tackle) cross between soccer and basketball. Eventually, we hope to field a hurling team. Some people MAY be familiar with hurling from some Guinness commercials a few years back. It is a stick and ball sport that predates Christianity in Ireland and is the grandfather of modern day ice hockey.

We are associated with the Irish Cultural Society of Arkansas (the group who puts on the LR St. Patrick's Day Parade) and several of our players are Irish with experience playing back home.

We are looking to field both mens and womens football teams in next summers national championships! Spread the word!

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Since I've been hyping a rugby team in NWA I have nothing to do with, I figured I might as well hype my pet project going on in Little Rock:

Little Rock Rangers Gaelic Athletic Association

Little Rock GAA is devoted to promoting and playing the Irish sports of Gaelic football and hurling in Little Rock and the rest of Arkansas. Gaelic football is the first sport we are recruiting for. It resembles a full contact (but non-tackle) cross between soccer and basketball. Eventually, we hope to field a hurling team. Some people MAY be familiar with hurling from some Guinness commercials a few years back. It is a stick and ball sport that predates Christianity in Ireland and is the grandfather of modern day ice hockey.

We are associated with the Irish Cultural Society of Arkansas (the group who puts on the LR St. Patrick's Day Parade) and several of our players are Irish with experience playing back home.

We are looking to field both mens and womens football teams in next summers national championships! Spread the word!

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That is hopeful participation in the future. Anyone who would find this to be an interesting and fun endeavor would be able to fairly easily pull together a 7 aside group. As the coach of the Rangers, I would offer my services to teach the game and help the satellite organizer as much as needed to get the satellite group up and running. In other words, I'd travel to Fayetteville, Jonesboro, Fort Smith, etc to teach the game until they were comfortable enough to progress on their own. I would, however, rely on the satellite organizer(s) to recruit and find suitable field space. When these things are in place, we would organize a state-wide 7 aside league. Eventually, the satellite groups would recruit enough to play nationally!

So, we don't yet have any specific individuals volunteering themselves in any of the locations mentioned on the site. But I'm pretty confident that in a few short years, specifically as the LR group begins to develop players who will leave for work or school elsewhere in the state, the right individuals will step forward.

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Don't mind at all! But it is a kinda long story... I'll try not to be so Arkansan and keep my reply on topic and to the point! LOL

For some reason while growing up near Harrison, I developed a passion for ice hockey. Don't know how it came about but it did. So I always wanted to try to play it. Upon moving to the Baltimore-Washington area for work, I decided to give it a try. Now, as a scholarly guy, I insist on knowing all the ins-and-outs of the things I do and in this case that included learning about the history of hockey. Lo and behold, ice hockey was most likely descended from the ancient Irish sport of hurling! Shortly after learning this, a coworker who is 2nd or 3rd generation Irish and runs a small pub in Baltimore comes to tell me that some Irish ex-pats are starting a GAA and they're trying to find people to play hurling. So naturally, I jump all over it. Turns out they never were able to recruit enough to put together a full team and so they tried to talk me into playing Gaelic football becuase they're getting a good turnout for that. I turn them down because the rules sound...well..odd. After about a year or so, I subscribe to a channel on Directv that shows both hurling and Gaelic football matches. All of sudden, upon actually watching Gaelic football, the odd sounding rules begin to click and the magic of game makes sense to me! So, this odd passion for ice hockey led me into hurling which lead me into Gaelic football. Now that I'm back in my home state, I have to keep playing somehow! Ancestrally, I'm just your average Arkansas mutt: Scots-Irish, Welsh, English, German, Native American. I don't play because I perceive some ancestral link like a lot of Americans do, I just play because I think they're fabulous sports.

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Very interesting. :lol: I admit I haven't played any of those sports but I have taken a bit of interest in them. Very rarely I'll get to see something on tv. There used to be a station I got that focused a lot on soccer but would show some of the other stuff like that and even some Aussie rules football. But now that station is basically just a soccer station now. I've gotten a lot more into watching soccer compared to the average American. If I got to watch more of the other sports I might be able to get into them more.
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Since I've been hyping a rugby team in NWA I have nothing to do with, I figured I might as well hype my pet project going on in Little Rock:

Little Rock Rangers Gaelic Athletic Association

Little Rock GAA is devoted to promoting and playing the Irish sports of Gaelic football and hurling in Little Rock and the rest of Arkansas. Gaelic football is the first sport we are recruiting for. It resembles a full contact (but non-tackle) cross between soccer and basketball. Eventually, we hope to field a hurling team. Some people MAY be familiar with hurling from some Guinness commercials a few years back. It is a stick and ball sport that predates Christianity in Ireland and is the grandfather of modern day ice hockey.

We are associated with the Irish Cultural Society of Arkansas (the group who puts on the LR St. Patrick's Day Parade) and several of our players are Irish with experience playing back home.

We are looking to field both mens and womens football teams in next summers national championships! Spread the word!

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