GAELIC SPORTS WORLD Issue 38 – November 16, 2015 | Page 15

started playing in May of 2013, just a month after the
club was founded.

AARON JOLEY – EARLY RECRUIT

GAA clubs around the world bring a sense of unity and
family, and that is what NGAC brings to me here in Nashville. I have met so many great friends with common interests whom I would never have met without this club.
Greatest achievement On the field : Just simply returning to play the game of hurling. I quit hurling when I
was 8 years old and returned when I was 36 year old. I
realized that I was never going to be able to compete in
Cork at the ripe ole age of 8 and I hung up my boots. I
could have played in the lower level B or C teams but
my personality at the time was such that I would have
considered it an embarrassment to play in a lower level.
Thankfully I have matured a lot since then and am very
content & proud to play Junior C hurling for Nashville.
Additionally, playing hurling in TN summers is rough. I
am very pleased that I even suit up to play on days when
the temps are higher than 80 degrees. It is not natural
for my pasty whiteness to be exposed to temperatures
above 80 degrees, never mind running after a bunch of
twenty year olds who grew up accustomed to these temperatures.
As a board member, I am privy to our long term plans
for the club and they are very ambitious.. I would love to
see our club play & compete at a Junior C level of hurling
in the NACB nationals. I think we could play now, but
we are not yet ready to compete. I am also excited about
the growth of camogie in our club. We fielded our first
all-Nashville camogie team this summer in competition
in Atlanta and they reached the Semi-final of that tournament. Some of these ladies had never heard of camogie
a few months before the tournament. This was a great
achievement for our club. The growth we have seen in
camogie has far surpassed our expectations, and I hope
to someday see a Nashville camogie league.

I most enjoy the fact that when I first came out to a
practice, there was about 5 people there, none of us really
knew each other and it was new to most of us. I knew
right then that this was going to be a true, grassroots organization if it was going to be anything at all.
I wanted to be a part of seeing it grow since I appreciated the effort that Johnny was putting into it. That first
summer we did not even have enough people to scrimmage.
When the MTSU guys combined with us we had a grand
total of one scrimmage before our first tournament game
in St. Louis…and during the scrimmage, the one thing
that can cancel a hurling practice occurred…lightning!
So I wore a helmet for a grand total of about 25 minutes
before my first match in St. Louis.

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