Often these activities center around sports: people throwing a football, playing catch with a baseball, kicking a soccer ball, flinging a frisbee or tossing a ball back and forth with lacrosse sticks.

But these days there are a few people starting up a new craze for the campus sports scene. The Gaelic Society is attempting to introduce the Irish sport of hurling to the Notre Dame Community.

For a university where one of the longest sections of the student directory is "O" and whose mascot is the Fighting Irish, it would seem a more-than-appropriate place for the sport to catch.

"Hurling is a brilliant game, but most visitors to Ireland, plus the many millions of people of Irish descent living abroad and here on campus only have a rudimentary understanding of the game of hurling," said Gerry Quinn, a Notre Dame grad student and native of Ireland. "Some simply have never heard of this sport at all."

Recently receiving sponsorship from the Gaelic Society, Quinn and Notre Dame junior Matt Connolly have brought the ancient Irish sport to campus. They have set up regular demonstrations for students who want to participate and learn more about the sport.

The two have brought a love of the Irish tradition and knowledge of the game of hurling to South Bend. Quinn, a native of Ireland, and Connolly, a former member of the Milwaukee Hurling Club, both have solid experience in the sport.

"This gives the students an opportunity to see how fast and skillful the Gaelic games really are, and how they are intertwined with Irish culture," Quinn said. "Americans who have never seen the sports are blown away."

The fastest field sport on earth

Hurling, which bears resemblances to lacrosse and field hockey, has often been called the fastest field sport on Earth.

The game is played on a large field or "pitch" that generally measures 137 meters in length and 82 meters in width. Fifteen players on a team carry "hurleys," or meter-long wooden sticks that are curved at the end. The hurleys are used to hit a "sliotar," a ball with a cork center and leather cover.

Points are scored by knocking the sliotar through the "H-shaped" goalposts for one point or under the posts and into a net for three.

The speed and agility needed to play the game comes in moving the ball up the field. Players are only allowed to pick the ball off the ground with the hurley – not their hands. They can then carry it in their hands for four steps before having to return it to the stick.

The true challenge of hurling arises in playing the game without getting injured. The game is played at a frantic pace with full contact, but there is generally no padding worn by the players. Only recently have hurlers begun to wear helmets in action.

Europe's oldest field sport

The roots of the sport of hurling go back to truly ancient tiems in Celtic history. As the Ice Age came to a close in Northen Europe, and the Celts settled into Ireland, they brought with them their culture, language, customs and pastimes, one of which was hurling.

In fact, much of Irish history and mythology is filled with stories related to the ancient sport. For instance, the legendary Gaelic warrior Cu Chulainn was considered an expert hurler. Myths such as these reveal a hurling history that is thousands of years old and demonstarte the importance of the sport in Irish tradition.

In recent centuries, hurling has enjoyed a revival juxtaposed with the boom in Irish culture and nationalism that occurred in the late 19th century. Spurring from Irish opposition to British rule, a group of Irish nationalists met in County Galway to establish an organization for Irish athletes in 1884. Thus the Gaelic Athletic Association was organized. To this day, it remains the governing body of hurling and Gaelic football.

The Notre Dame community has experienced brushes with the sport of hurling in recent years, likely without even understanding the significance.

In 1996, Notre Dame defeated Navy 54-27 in a football game in Dublin. The two teams played in Croke Park, which is the National Gaelic games stadium of Ireland and one of the biggest arenas in Europe.

Croke park is considered to be somewhat sacred in Gaelic games circles. Soccer and rugby are banned from competition in the stadium, while American football was one of the only foreign sports to have been played on its soil when Notre Dame and Navy battled there.

Bringing hurling to the Irish, sort of

Quinn and Connolly have begun to see the results of their goal to introduce hurling to Notre Dame. Weekly training sessions have been packed with students eager to take up the new sport and rosters for competitive squads are filling rapidly.

The goal right now of the organizers is to complete the formation of an athletic club and hold a hurling exhibition in the spring semester. This year, Saint Patrick's Day will fall just after spring break, and the heads of the newly-formed Gaelic Society see the Irish holliday as a brilliant opportunity to get the sport off and running.

Recently the Gaelic Society aquired hurleys direct from Ireland with help from the Keough Institute for Irish Studies. In addition to the demostrations, Fiddlers Hearth, a new public house downtown, is used by members for socializing, and on Sundays they open their doors for the Gaelic Society, where members and newcomers alike can eat, watch Gaelic sports and view Irish cultural documentaries to learn more about Irish tradition.

"We wanted to set about informing people about hurling and getting more people involved in actually picking up the game at an informal level," Quinn said. "Notre Dame is surely one of the most appropriate places to start, and the level of enthusiasm amongst students here has proved this."