The great Italian lawn bowling game, Bocce, has arrived at UP in the form of intramural competition
By Dannielle Lowe
Get ready UP students, Bocce has finally arrived. The Italian lawn bowling sport made its debut as an intramural activity on Sept. 11 and it looks like Bocce is here to stay. The Bocce season will last four weeks.
This is the first year UP has offered Bocce as an intramural sport. Brian Dezzani, head of Recreation Services, decided to bring Bocce to the university because he believed it would be fun for the students.
"I thought it would be fun for the students," said Dezzani, himself a Bocce aficionado.
There are 22 Bocce teams, each made up of two players equating to roughly 44 students enjoying the opportunity to participate in this unique sport.
For Bocce-loving students, the addition is exciting.
"I definitely was excited. I forced my roommate to play with me - I want the championship shirt," said senior Jessica Lewicki, a team captain for the undefeated Team Floozytime. Team Floozytime won it's first two games by default; its opponents did not show up and thus forfeited the game.
Bocce is an ancient sport dating back to the days of the Roman Empire. History suggests the game originated around 5200 B.C.E. in Egypt, where ancient stick figures of two boys playing a similar game have been found drawn on cave walls.
Variations of Bocce quickly spread from Egypt to Greece, where Roman soldiers learned to play, formally named it and perfected the sport, altering and shaping it.
Two significant alterations were the changing of the use of rocks and coconuts for the use of wooden balls. The Romans were the first to play Bocce the way it is played today and the game has been part of the regional culture ever since.
Bocce is actually the Italian word for ball, which is a fitting name because the sport is played with nine of them. There are two teams of either two or four players. Each team has four balls. There is a smaller ball referred to as the pallino or the jack. The entire game revolves around the pallino.
At the most basic level, the object of the sport is to get as many bocce balls as close to the pallino as possible. However, the many subtleties of the sport are more complicated than that.
The game begins with a coin toss to see who rolls first. The first team rolls the ball attempting to get its bocce as close to the pallino as possible.
The second team rolls next. If the second team rolls closer to the pallino, team one goes again to attempt to beat the team two's roll.
However, if team two does not get closer, then it continues to roll until it gets closer than team one or it runs out of balls.
If team two does not get a bocce ball past team one's bocce, then team one wins and is awarded a point. However, it also has the opportunity to roll the remaining three balls. It seems easy right? Well it is.
What becomes confusing is the scoring process. Only one team is awarded points during each frame. The maximum points available is four, one point for each bocce ball closer to the pallino. The first team to score 11 points wins.
According to students, playing Bocce is a great way to test your multitasking skills while at the same time enjoying some of the last of the summer outside.
"It's a relaxed outdoor sport," said Lewicki, as she highlighted the many qualities of Bocce, such as being able to socialize and play at the same time. "You can have a cocktail in one hand and a bocce in the other."
