ICCM was established in 1989 by Tadhg McInerney, originally of Limerick, Ireland, at the request of fellow Milwaukee resident and Dublin native, John Gleeson. Gleeson, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Irish studies professor, and long-time affiliate of Irish Fest, was interested in somehow including currachs in this country's largest Celtic festival, held annually on Milwaukee's lakefront. The Mulkerrin brothers of the Pittsburgh Curragh Club ­- one of the oldest currach organizations in this country ­- built and brought a boat for the new Milwaukee team to race at the 1989 Irish Fest.

Soon afterward, ICCM joined the North American Currach Association, a conference that had until that point been a primarily East-Coast organization. The original NACA teams were Annapolis, Albany, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Boston. With the addition of the Milwaukee team, the currach racing tradition has spread to the Midwest, the original mission of McInerney and Gleeson. New Orleans later joined the conference and in 2000, another NACA team sprung up west of the Ohio River, in Columbus, bringing the competition a little closer to home for ICCM.