SOI #657 Bocce Season Ends

Bocce, it's an ancient game that was played throughout the Roman Empire. Bocce is the plural of the Italian word boccia or bowl. It is similar to bowling in that a ball is rolled down any alley or in this game a court. The court is 10X60 feet in dimension. Scoring is somewhat akin to the game of horseshoes, getting closest to the pin. In Bocce it's getting your bowling ball closest to the pallino. A pollino is called "jock" in English. It's a little white ball about twice the size of a golf ball. The bowling balls are close in size to softballs.

Competitors can be one individual vs another or teams of two, four or more. Each team gets four bocce balls. With a flip of a coin the pollino is tossed into the opponents zone. The team that tosses the pollino gets to go first rolling their bocce ball. The object of the game is to get the bocce ball closest to the pollino. Points are scored with the ball or balls closest to the pollino. A team can score as many as four points or down to just one once all four bocce balls are thrown for each team. The team to get 12 points first is the winner of that set. At least two sets are played for a match.

Italian immigrants brought this ancient game with them to points all over the world. Members of Wellsville's SOI Lodge 657 have been carrying on the tradition for years. They started with an outdoor court and when funds became available they were able to enclose it with a roof overhead. The court was hand made by members of the lodge and has artificial turf. Past President Nunzio Lombardozzi said other clubs have come from all over the region to check out the Wellsville set-up. It was an outdoor league for four years and the last six have been inside.

Each year members of the SOI Lodge start a league of 10 teams and have regular matches on Monday & Tuesdays. Each team plays every other team at least once. They start in September and this past Monday & Tuesday they wrapped up the season with Tournament matches.

Congratulations to this year champions on the Kiger Team. That team is made up with John & Lori Kiger, Andrew Gooding, Mr. Gibbs, Venerable President Rocco DaLonzo, Joe DaLonzo and Nunzio Lombardozzi. Runner up this year was Team LaScola.

While researching Bocce on Wikipedia we learned the most renown Bocce player in the world is the late Umberto Granaglia from Italy. In his life time he was the winner of 13 World Championships, 12 European Championships and 46 Italian National Championships. That man must have had the touch.

ole nib