Overseas Briefing Sorry, that was "shinty" you said, right?

Author: Mike Bayersdorfer

Ever heard of shinty? Probably not - and that wouldn't be that terribly surprising, either. Shinty is a game played in the highlands of Scotland and at some universities and cities in the lowlands, but its reach is pretty much limited to Scotland. If you know what Irish hurling is, it's similar to that. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, imagine a field hockey field but longer, field hockey nets but taller, a bald tennis ball filled with cork, sticks that look like a combination of a golf club and an ice hockey stick, and twelve players a side. The game play is similar to ice hockey- basically anything goes as long as you're not clubbing your opponent over the head with your stick.

It's a massively entertaining game to play; I had never heard of the game before coming over here, but ended up going to a practice with the team and loved it. I caught on rather quickly - a lifetime spent playing ice hockey turned out to be rather helpful for learning shinty. Three weeks later, I was starting for the St. Andrews A side against the second best team in Scotland - the University of Edinburgh. There's certainly no love lost between St. Andrews and Edinburgh on the shinty pitch- Edinburgh is St Andrews' biggest rival, and last year Edinburgh won 21-4 and did not endear themselves to St. Andrews with their actions during or after the win. Since I was one of only two new starters on the team, almost everyone on the pitch remembered last year's match and seemed pretty intent on making Edinburgh remember it too.

After hearing all this, I wasn't sure what to expect from the match. When we jumped out to a 2-0 lead 25 minutes into the first half, I was confused and excited; this is not how I expected the game to play out, but I wasn't going to complain. For the next 65 minutes of play, we clung desperately to a small lead - which was 3-2 for the last ten minutes - as Edinburgh peppered our defense with shots. When the final whistle blew, the St Andrews side went crazy; not only had we beaten our main rival, but I also later found out that the St Andrews men's shinty team had not won any game in the last ten years. The celebration on the field was quite a sight - most of the players never thought they'd get the chance to win any game, let alone do it against Edinburgh.

I can't exactly say what I expected showing up in Scotland for a semester, but I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine doing something like this - playing the local sport and helping my team pull off an incredible upset against one of the best teams in the country. Shinty is a great game though, because it's the perfect Scottish game. Shinty reflects, to a certain extent, the Scottish people themselves. It appears violent and hectic and complicated, but once you involve yourself with it and see it up close, you realize that it's a simple game, and what might seem like excesses to the casual observer are simply exuberance from the joy of playing the game, and knowing that it's really all about just having a little fun.