This past weekend, the Irish Cultural Club held its third annual Gaelic Showcase event, inviting students to try Gaelic football and hurling in a friendly environment. Though the event has grown into a tradition for the club, members are still fighting to take the next step: making Gaelic football an official club sport. 

Senior Nolan Heffelfinger, president of the Irish Cultural Club, said, “It’s great to build some Irish community from these games.” 

This drive to build community goes farther than the ICC Showcase. Junior Madison Donohoe has led the push to get Gaelic football officially recognized as a club sport, going through all the motions from completing club documents and creating a club constitution,  to petitioning for student interest. 

“We could have gotten even more, to be honest,” Donohoe said. Getting signatures wasn’t enough, though. After all her organising, she was told that the school caps club sports at 25 teams. Her proposal was rejected on these grounds. 

Despite the setback, Donohoe isn’t giving up. She has already received support from the head of the National Collegiate Gaelic Athletic Association, and aims to use this to keep trying to create a team next year. “[The head of the NCGAA] was really trying to help me this year,” Donohoe said. Her efforts this year put her on the waitlist for creating a club sport at Fairfield, though she acknowledges that she is unsure of what this means going forward.

Donohoe also believes that official status would do a lot to grow interest in the sport on campus. The team she intends to create would be co-recreational, allowing female and male students to play and compete on the same team. For the sport to qualify, however, there has to be a certain number of female players on the pitch at a time. “There’s definitely interest there,” she said. “Even among the girls.” 

Heffelfinger is just as optimistic. After founding the Irish Cultural Club during his sophomore year, he has built the showcase into a recurring event that draws the UConn Gaelic football team and the Hartford Gaelic Athletic Association to Grauert Field. With graduation soon approaching, he hopes the tradition and push for club sport status will continue on without him. “I’ve been trying to instill this kind of tradition for the last three years,” he said. “I’d love to keep it going. Hartford and UConn love to come down here every year, and keeping it going helps them, too.” 

He was also quick to point out that Gaelic sports aren’t just for Irish students. “We have a lot of kids in our club who aren’t Irish at all,” Heffelfinger said. “A lot of them come out here today to learn Gaelic football and they end up having a ton of fun with it.” He added that the Gaelic football community in the area is already strong, and Fairfield’s involvement would only allow for more competitive opportunities for all teams.

For those who haven’t tried the sport, there is not much of a learning curve. Freshman Jake VanDermark played Gaelic football for the first time during Sunday’s showcase. “I picked it up easy enough,” he said, attributing some of that to his soccer background. He added that he would “100% join” if it became a club sport next year. 

Donohoe agrees that the sport’s accessibility is one of its selling points. “It’s easy to pick up,” she says, “and it’s a fun time.”

Whether Fairfield will make room for club Gaelic football remains to be seen. For now, the club aims to make sure that the sport is able to stay visible on campus. They will still continue to make a case for it to gain club sport status, though. “I think Fairfield would love it,” Heffelfinger said.