Brian O’Flynn is helping to spread his passion for Gaelic sports with the Memphis community, along with the Memphis Gaelic Athletic Association’s vision of fitness and fun for all levels. Brian grew up in the south of Ireland, a region that revered sports as the pinnacle of building community. In his hometown of Nenagh, the camaraderie around sports fostered a community centered around a friendly yet tribal rivalry between competing towns in the surrounding parishes. “Gaelic sports were ingrained in the society, and a huge part of my childhood growing up,” Brian remembers. He played two sports, hurling, which Brian compares somewhat to American lacrosse, hockey, and baseball, and Gaelic football, which compares more closely to soccer and rugby.

Hurling is the fastest field sport in the world, where players use a stick called a hurley to hit a small ball in the opponent’s goal. The ball can be caught in hand and carried for a maximum of four steps, or struck into the air or along the ground by the hurley. Hurling and Gaelic football have key similarities in that both are played by 15-player teams in the same structure, with the same scoring system; however, while hurling is a ball-and-stick game, in Gaelic football, players use their hands and feet to control the ball, which resembles a soccer ball. Each sport also has a women’s league; “camogie” is the women’s version of hurling, and ladies’ Gaelic football, which is nearly identical to the men’s versions of the sports, with some slight differences. Where hurling and camogie are more skill and agility-based, Gaelic football is a more physical game. Because each sport requires different types of fitness, players typically gravitate to one sport or the other.

Brian found himself gravitating towards hurling and played into his early 20s. At the time, he was pursuing a degree in biopharmaceutical chemistry at the University of Galway. After graduating, he moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in chemistry at the University of South Florida. After completing his doctorate, Brian moved to Memphis in 2020 to work as a postdoctoral researcher at St. Jude before settling at the hospital long-term as a scientific writer. Brian quickly connected to the small but tight-knit Irish community in town and learned about the Memphis Gaelic Athletic Association that had formed in 2016. He also quickly felt at home playing and coaching the sports he loved. While it is a sports club, Brian and his teammates pride themselves on being open and inclusive of beginners with no experience with hurling or Gaelic football or who may not be particularly fit or sporty. The only requirements are to be interested and welcoming. “Immediately when I joined, I found a community of open-minded, inclusive, good people just looking to get out and challenge themselves to develop a new skill,” Brian says.

Memphis Gaelic Athletic Association has teams for hurling, camogie, and men’s and women’s Gaelic football. The Gaelic sports season runs from February to October, and they train as a team once a week. Twice a year, in Spring and Fall, they play a local city league, typically dividing the club to play each other for regular season matches. They also represent Memphis on the road and play teams from different cities like Nashville, Knoxville, and Little Rock. “While hurling and football are athletic sports that require fitness, we are just friends who have fun playing and socializing together. We take our sport seriously, but do not take ourselves too seriously and always remember that we are there to have a good time,” Brian says.

Learn more about the Memphis Gaelic Athletic Association. Check out their Instagram @memphisgaa, and feel free to direct message them for further information, or email them at [email protected].

By Zoe Harrison
Photo by Tindall Stephens