Camán, all ye mammies, try camogie!
IT’S an unusual thing to say to your eight-year-old daughter: “You’ve got a smelly belly.” However, the phrase is slang in camogie circles for ‘turn the hurley outwards to catch the ball, not inwards’.
Mother-of-three Caroline Fitzgerald is among 250 mums nationwide who have participated in Mum & Me, a Camogie Association programme that has the women coaching their daughters in camogie skills. Yet, the 38-year-old part-time HSE worker had never played camogie or even picked up a hurley until a few months ago.
“I’d never really played any sport, just basketball at school and a bit of volleyball. Corofin is a huge camogie and hurling area. When I moved here I started watching matches on TV. It looked great fun but I could never do anything to help Kiera or Dean, my son, who’s 18 and who plays hurling.”
Mum & Me is reversing the ‘drop and go’ trend, where parents are literally a taxi service ferrying kids from one hobby to the next. “Parents are on the road five nights a week ensuring their child tries everything from ballet to rugby. They never think the child’s activity could be a shared one that they could do together,” says Deirdre Murphy, Munster camogie development officer.
Mum & Me gets mothers and daughters into their local camogie club one night a week for an hour. The six-week programme teaches mums the basic skills of the game, as well as how to coach these to their daughters. Four hundred five to 12-year-old girls went through the scheme with their mums in 2012. “After age 12, bringing Mammy to training isn’t cool,” comments Murphy.
LIT GAA development officer Eddie O’Sullivan designed Mum & Me in conjunction with Murphy, piloting it in his home camogie club, Blackrock. A Camogie Association team then developed it into a nationwide programme. Local Sports Partnerships help fund hurleys and sliothars.
Murphy, a Clare county forward, says her dad always made time to puck around with her. “He made a massive effort to teach me the skills at home. I still have a few pucks with him. We’re very close — a lot of our closeness was built through that play. It’s something I value and I feel a lot more parents and kids could have it.
“Kids have so much on today that helmet and hurley stay in the boot from one training session to the other. You really only develop a love of the game by practising and pucking around with someone else. Through Mum & Me, we’re creating a culture where practising is fun and you can do it at home.”
Kiera Fitzgerald thought it hilarious when her mum first said she’d be playing camogie with her and teaching her skills. “I was a blank slate,” says Caroline. “I have no bad habits. Kids can pick up bad habits really quickly but I can see stuff — whether she’s holding the hurley the right way — and point it out to her.
“Kiera loves that I’m playing. She’s a big cock of the walk when we go down to the club now. It’s like she’s trying to impress me with her skills. She and I have a good relationship but this has improved the bond. We have more to talk about. I know the language of camogie. Before I’d ask her how she’d got on. Now I ask ‘What did you do today?’ I ask her to demonstrate how I can do it.”
Caroline has joined Corofin Junior Camogie team and says the whole experience has given her a fitness boost. “I thought I was fit — I do some circuit training twice a week, but this is a whole different level of fitness.”
Murphy believes hurling, for many, is watching Henry Shefflin on TV. “Camogie and hurling seem out of reach if you haven’t played since you were five. With Mum & Me, you do it for six weeks. You do a shoulder clash and you survive. You think, ‘Oh my God! I can hit it. I can rise it! I could have been doing this all along’. It takes the mystery out of it.”
At a time when clubs need volunteers, Murphy says you’re trying to grab people and get them saying, ‘This is a great club – I might give a hand with first aid or PRO or do a coaching course’. Since 2011, 42 Mum & Me programmes have rolled out nationally and the scheme is winning clubs volunteers. New Inn in Tipperary has recruited seven new volunteers to help with coaching and administration. Mungret Camogie Club in Limerick tells the same story — two new coaches and numerous volunteers on the administration and fundraising side.
In a bid to include dads, the Camogie Association also runs the programme as Come Hurl With Me. If interested in the programme for your club, contact the camogie development officer in your area — visit www.camogie.ie.
*The Camogie Association holds its 2013 activity day in Croke Park on Apr 6
It started with a few friends going for a ‘puck around’ for the craic, to meet new people and banish any pangs of loneliness for home. That was less than two years ago, but for all they’ve achieved, for the women of the Toronto Irish Camogie club it could be 10.
Still basking in the glory of a spectacular first season that saw them win the North American championships, the team is now gearing up to represent Toronto in Dublin during the summer’s Gathering celebrations.
According to the club’s PRO, Trish Griffin from Limerick, most of the women had never played before, making the win all the sweeter, given they were up against such well-established teams as San Francisco, New York and Boston.
“It was an unbelievable feeling for us, and such an achievement for a team who didn’t really know each other that well,” says Griffin.
Out of the 35, less than eight had played competitively.
“I think it’s much easier to join a team here at a later age. It’s very easy going,” says Griffin. She comes from a sporting family, but says she left it too late to play back home.
Even the girl who started the team, Leanne Fitzgerald from West Clare, had never played competitively before. “For her it was a way to meet new people and so for this to come of it is unreal,” says Griffin.
Once word got out about the club, there were 30 or 40 women turning up for training every week. They ended up setting up their own seven-a-side league, where the two top teams played against each other in Toronto’s Centennial Park. The club even boasts three Canadian players — one girl has Irish parents, another is married to an Irish man and plays Aussie Rules for Canada, while the third is dating a Limerick lad.
Given the numbers, and with even more Irish on the way, they will probably split into a junior and senior team, says Griffin. The Toronto brigade will travel as one to Dublin this summer for an All-Ireland camogie league, featuring teams from London, the US and Scotland.
A great honour, but there’s a caveat: they need to raise funds to make the trip back. “We are currently looking for corporate sponsorship and it is difficult. I think it is harder for women’s sports to get that recognition, but we are trying and hoping that we get our flights and maybe some new gear subsidised.”
— Jennifer Hough
