Studying abroad in Ireland for the summer, Guilford senior, Brett McDonough discovered the ancient Irish sport of hurling.

“My roommate said, ‘you’ve got to check this out!’ and he turned on hurling on the television,” McDonough said. “These little kids were playing hurling – it was one of the most violent, confusing things I’ve ever seen.”

Hurling is older than the recorded history of Ireland and is the country’s second most popular sport, behind Gaelic football. Fifteen people per team brandish hurleys, which are three-foot long dull wooden axes that can hit a leather ball with a cork core, called a sliotar, over 100 yards.

“Some of the adults wore helmets kind of like the old leather football helmets, only thinner,” McDonough said. “But they weren’t required to.”

Players over 21 usually forego all safety equipment, despite the fact that certain types of tackling are permitted and hitting one’s opponent with the hurley is legal, provided it’s done two-handed. Children wear only a plastic helmet and mouth guard; no one wears pads.

“That must be fun to get hit with,” Guilford Athletic Trainer Shannon Swiatkiewicz said. “I’d want them to have the same type of pads and helmets Lacrosse players have.”

Hurling is usually played on a pitch 100 yards by 160 yards, and has eight referees. At either end of the field, H-shaped posts stand just over six and a half yards high, seven yards wide, and have a crossbar eight feet off the ground. The lower portion of the goal has a net guarded by a goalie.

Hitting the ball between the top posts scores a point, while scoring a goal on the bottom gains three points. The goalie’s hurley has a slightly larger paddle, but he remains otherwise unprotected against sliotars routinely going over 93 miles per hour.

“Hurling is more proof that non-American sports can be more bad-ass than American sports,” senior Tristan Winkler said.

Offensive players are allowed to grab the ball with one hand, but can only take three steps with the sliotar in hand, before having to balance or dribble the ball off the hurley. The ball can be passed via a drop-kick or open-handed strike, and at all times a player is free to hit the ball as hard as he can with the hurley.

The Gaelic Athletic Association has controlled the professional sport since 1884, and tens of thousands attend the matches. Seating more fans than Charlotte’s 73,298-capacity Carolina Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium, Croke Park hosts over 82,000 people and is the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association.

“I lived right beside Croke Park in Dublin; it was pretty intense,” McDonough said McDonough. “The park was huge.You could hear it echoing through all of Dublin on game day.