When you think of the Irish in America, the usual hotspots come to mind.

New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia.

When you think of GAA in America the same places come to mind - obviously it is no coincidence.

It is growing too. Every year a New York team competes in the Connacht Championship. In December over 100 children flocked to Limerick field in Philadelphia for a coaching session in the annual GAA All-Star trip.

How GAA started to grow there has a simple explanation due to the Irish population but what about some of the other teams? How does a GAA club start in somewhere like Indianapolis?


The city wouldn’t be known as an Irish stronghold, despite being just a couple of hours outside of Chicago it wouldn’t have any strong links to the country and the origin story of Indianapolis GAA is a strange one.

“There was talk about a guy who studied abroad in Ireland and fell in love with the sport of hurling and at his wedding he gave hurleys to his best men and they played outside of the reception,” Club Chairman David Littlejohn and PRO Woody White tell BuzzSport.

"I think around the same time there were some Irish guys who were looking to get a team started with another American who wanted to get a team started in the area and collectively they started a club and there were maybe 10 or 12 people at the time.”

Its has snowballed from there with the club having close to 200 members, eight hurling teams and three football teams in 2018.

"We’ve had practices in the past and we’ll have guys from Ireland swing by and say back home that they don’t have practices as big as ours. We’ll have 60-70 people at a practice.”

Despite being one of the lesser known GAA clubs in America, the club can boast that they have the best pitch in the country. In 2013, Mayor Greg Ballard had his heart set on building the World Sports Park which would be made up of fields of different sports from around the world and the GAA club managed to talk their way into getting a pitch.


At the time we found out that that project was going to happen so we sat at the table with the director of the Parks department and handed them a piece of paper how full size pitches would fit onto that park and it totally fit into what they were trying to create so we got a seat at the table. They are probably the best fields that you can play on at least in the midwest or even in the entire nation. Every time someone comes to our tournament they say it is one of the best fields they have played on so they’re expensive to rent, we have our invitational there but we don’t necessarily have our leagues there. We definitely appreciate it.

Just like in Ireland, the entire GAA community has completely bought in to the club. One of their founding players started his own hurling company, providing members with hurls. One of their sponsors, an organic food store, cut out a section of their shop to make a hurling booth and sold grips and sliothers and all the necessary gear to get started.

Viewing parties are common, having screenings of Championship games is the norm:

"Some of the guys in our club are so devoted that they’d pick the GAA over the NFL.”

When they travel to National Championships, Indianapolis stand out like a sore thumb. The ratio of Irish to Americans is one in 20 give or take:

"There really isn’t a huge Irish community, we have a lot of Irish Americans but not a lot of first generation in Indianapolis. I specifically remember going to nationals in 2007 and they were laughing at me because we have no Irish people and I said that we had four Irish people on our team.


"It seems like when somebody moves over from Ireland they are able to find our club. We embrace them obviously, they’re good talent and great to have them in our club.

"Our goal and mission for the club is to spread Irish culture and heritage through sports and so it is great to have people who grew up playing the sport because most people who grew up playing the sport got started in their 20’s, the American ones at least.

"We maybe have 10 Irish people. When we went to nationals this year, our upper level team played intermediate and we had two Irish guys on the team and the rest were American.”

Despite that, there has been a resounding level of success. They are Six-time National Champions and well respected.

• 2015 – Jr. A Hurling, Jr. D Football

• 2013 – Jr. B Premier Hurling, Jr. Camogie

• 2012 – Jr. B Hurling

• 2008 – Jr. C Hurling


As well as being crowned champions at the International Hurling festival hosted by Aer Lingus in 2013.

The club will continue to grow, they have their draft to pick their teams in the next few weeks which will mark the beginning of what will hopefully be another great year for Indianapolis GAA.

GAA hotspots? Add the lesser known city in the mid-west to your list.