After watching a professional match of Gaelic football while in Ireland, University of Wyoming professors Tristan Wallhead and Mark Byra have introduced the sport to the physical education curriculum for their students who will be student teaching this year.
Gaelic football requires many different skills from different sports allowing for multiple students to get involved and prevents any one type of athlete from dominating the game. The past few weeks UW students have been teaching the game at the Laramie Middle School
“By the time kids get to middle school and high school they are already soccer players, or basketball players, or volleyball players,” said Wallhead. “It levels the playing field a little bit and makes it inclusive because none of the kids particularly dominate because they are one learning the game together and two a single skill does not dominate particularly.”
Students have begun to learn where they fit best on the field and where their skills allow them to succeed.
Cody Kline, a senior majoring as a physical education teacher, from Lander has been teaching the students at Laramie Middle School how to play Gaelic football.
“Most games are based on either using your hands or using your feet,” Kline said. “This game combined that. The biggest challenge I saw was there was a rule that you can not pick up the ball with your hands from the ground. You had to use your feet to bring the ball from the ground to your hands.”
Students would want to get the ball in their hands because passing is done by either punting the ball or using an underhand volleyball serve to pass the ball. Students can also dribble the ball like a basketball to advance down field.
Gaelic football is played on an open field similar to football, soccer and rugby. On either side are the goals that combine both soccer and football goals. The lower half is a soccer goal while upright posts coming out of the top to make a field goal.
To score teams can either kick the ball into the soccer goal for three points or punt the ball through the field goal for one point.
There is contact allowed in this sport, but that aspect was taken away for the PE classes Wallhead said.
While the rest of the state will get to learn this sport through their physical education program this spring, UW students will have to wait a bit if they want to play one of Ireland’s national sports.
Wallhead is looking to get Gaelic football added to intramural sports next fall and there is a possibility of eventually introducing it as a club sport. However the final decision rests with the intramurals department.
