Bocce - East Coast Style

Where do they play?

Everywhere. There are public courts sprinkled all up and down the New Jersey coast adjacent to boardwalks or beaches. There are public courts in the heart of downtown Philadelphia and Allentown, Pennsylvania. There are courts available for anyone to use adjacent to churches in Valdese, North Carolina, Long Branch, New Jersey and New Amsterdam, New York. There are courts available for commercial play in conjunction with bowling alleys in Rome, New York and you can settle your dinner over a game at restaurants in Boston and Manhattan. You can vacation in the Catskills at resorts with bocce courts being a primary activity. There are courts in senior housing communities, recreation centers, bocce clubs, Italian clubs and fraternal clubs as well as many private yards. And if you can't find a court, keep your eyes open. You might just find a game in a playground or open field somewhere.

How do they play?

Rules differ greatly, just as they do throughout the rest of the country. It depends on the home court and tournament organizer. Games are played on 60 foot courts and 85 foot courts. Some versions require that you call your shot, others do not. Some balls are punto raffa volo size, some are larger, but there are very few metal balls. Most versions alternate ends of the court, some have two teammates permanently stationed at each end of the court for the duration of one game. Some areas allow side wall bank shots and back wall to remain live if your bocce hits it, while others would call that a dead ball and remove it from the play. Some courts have angle boards placed in the corners to allow the players to additionally use those angles much as you would in billiards. On other courts where the back wall is live, it is a swinging board which deadens the impact for a bounce back out into the playing field. There are courts that used to have the swinging back boards which have been removed, and courts that have removable corner angles. And then there are the play yards and fields where there are no courts and the players play wherever the pallino lands.

The variations in rules and courts in no way suggests there is no organization in the sport of bocce in the east, quite the opposite. The concentration of bocce players in New Jersey is phenomenal with extensive league play and interclub tournaments. The popularity has grown rapidly with new leagues adopting their neighbors rules. The idyllic setting with courts adjacent to the boardwalk on the Atlantic shoreline in places like Asbury Park has created a haven for major regional tournaments that draw players from all neighboring states, thereby exposing their rules to even more of the bocce population. You know when you go to New Jersey to play in a tournament that there will be angles in the corners and everything is good. Teams of four roll one ball each. "You don't get a second chance so you have to make it count" they claim. It's different and it's fun.

When you travel to Philadelphia you find possibly the oldest organized league federation in the country. A group of six Italian clubs established the Bocce League of America in 1935 for the sole purpose of creating regular league/tournament competition. They have a printed rule book, standardized courts and "professional" and "amateur" categories distinguished by ability based on detailed statistics kept on individual players. Their courts are twelve feet wide and vary from 75 to 90 feet in length with a 65 foot playing area. They use composition balls similar in size to punto raffa volo balls and play a game that is typically international volo style rules. They too participate in tournaments with players outside their area and help neighboring communities establish the game. If you attend a tournament in Pennsylvania you know that you will probably be playing doubles, the side and back walls may not be used, all balls will be marked, the pallino may not be displaced more than 18 inches and the bocce balls no more than 36 inches and if you intend to "shoot" a ball out you will have to declare you shot, shoot your ball in the air and hit the target or within an 18 inch scribed arc. The rules are clearly different than New Jersey. It's challenging.

With all of these differences, you will find that bocce players in the northeast are just a microcosm of the rest of the country. There are excellent competitive players who continue to advance to the final games at tournaments regularly. They have various rules primarily based on the region of Italy from which the local Italian community came, somewhat adapted to their new environment, and refined over time. They have the Italian clubs that introduced the sport, the city parks, the leagues with families, couples, and the new converts from other ethnic origins. There are young, old, politicians and laborers. And they all have three things in common. They are a great group of people. They all like to have fun. And they all want to get the point.

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