I presented this game to the class.
Bocce ball is a boules game, where the objective is to get balls as close to a smaller target ball as possible. It was refined in Italy. The game is popular Italy and other places with high Italian populations, as well as in the north of the Mediterranean sea.
The smaller target ball in this game is called the jack, or alternatively, the boccino (little bocce ) or the pallino (bullet) in Italian. Each team gets four larger bocce balls for throwing across a 90ft. by 8.2 to 13.1ft soil or asphalt court,though it can be played in open space as well. The court has a foul line, which players should not step across.
Teams may contain one to four people. There are two teams. In the beginning of a round, called a frame, a team is randomly chosen (by coin toss, rock-paper-scissors, etc) to throw the jack into the court. The same team then throws their first ball. The other team throws their first ball. After both teams have thrown, the team whose bocce ball is farthest away from the jack throws the rest of their bocce balls at once. Then, the other team does so as well. After all the balls have been thrown, the team with the closest ball to the jack counts their points by measuring the distance between how close their balls are to the jack compared with the closest nearby ball of the other team.
More rounds are played until one team has reached 12, 16, or 21 points.
I had never heard of this game before you mentioned it to me because I am physically disabled and I cannot play the normal sports that require leg use. I played with my sister in our front yard in New Jersey when I went to visit over the weekend. It was challenging and intense in the way that shuffleboard and golf are. It was not exciting, and could move either very slowly or very quickly depending on how strategically we placed our balls; however, we both have fairly weak arm strength, terrible aim, and poor eyesight, so we didn’t play very well. It would be more fun if we were athletic types of people. I also think bocce ball would be interesting if we were allowed other ways to throw the ball aside from the underhand throw. It would be interesting to see what would happen if we could kick it or throw it overhand or use a stick to poke it into place.
