SUN CITY – You’re standing on an artificial turf court, about 50 feet long. You roll a little red target ball, called a pallino, in the same way you roll a bowling roll down the alley, only much slower. Then you take a bocce ball, about the size of a softball, but much heavier, and try to roll it as close to the pallino as you can.
Your opponents do the same, and you take turns trying to either knock opposing balls away or put your balls closer. The game of bocce requires a deft touch, acute concentration, an ability to judge distance correctly, and patience.
Among the 700 or so bocce ball players at Sun City, Don and Sandy Ferrari, both lefthanders, emerged as the best of the best last week and won the 2011 Bocce Club post-league playoffs over Gino and Maria Fullone.
The Ferraris (no relation to the Italian car maker, by the way) defeated five other couples in the finals, the last hour of which were played on the Prairie Lodge Bocce courts in a steady drizzle on August 30. In the final match against the Fullones, they took an early 7-2 lead in the final game and made most of the big shots the rest of the way to post an 11-9 win for the title.
“We’ve never won this before, but we’ve been in the eighteen-team finals three times before,” said Don. He says he has played the game all of his life. “We’ve been playing together since we lived in Arizona some years ago,” said Sandy, who is German. “I had to learn this game from my Italian husband, so this proves that you can teach a German something,” she joked.
The Ferraris and Fullones are among the 700 members of Sun City’s Bocce Club, the largest activity group in the community. The club holds competitive activities in 18 leagues all summer and then invites the best pair in each league to compete in the playoffs. Don and Sandy will be presented with their engraved clock trophy September 9 at the club’s awards dinner at Boulder Ridge Country Club.
A team is a pair of players. At Sun City, couples typically team up, although many of the playoff pairs were two men or women. The deft touch and accuracy they display with the heavy balls is impressive, drawing frequent oohs and aahs from the large crowd of players and fans.
“The rain bothered me a little because when we picked up the balls, there was sand and grit on them, so we had to wipe them off,” Sandy said. “But we’ve played in rain before; it’s nothing new.”
The other semifinal pairs were LeRoy Piechowski and Rich Olson, and Dale Torii and June Choate.
The Ferraris lived in downstate Oglesby, Illinois, for some years before moving to Libertyville, from where they came to Sun City eight years ago.
“We play bocce almost every chance we get,” Don said. “We play in our neighborhood as well in the Bocce Club league. It’s a very social sport, can be played by seniors of all ages, even if they are not in the most robust condition physically. It’s just a great activity for us.”
Legend has it the sport was originally played by the Romans 2,000 years ago. If you didn’t know the sport has Italian roots, you could guess it from the names of many of the participants at these finals – Ferrari, Fullone, Ileana Cecere, Dale Torii, Minutillo, Chiapetta, and Papaleo.
Mama Mia.
