June 27, 2008

St. Rose lets good times roll on bocce courts

Andy Telli, Tennessee Register

MURFREESBORO. Go to the bocce courts at St. Rose of Lima Church in Murfreesboro on a bright Sunday afternoon, and you’ll find people twisting their bodies and waving their arms trying to will their ball into the right position.

The cheers and groans tell you if they were successful. The laughs and smiles tell you they’re all having a good time.

“I love the game,” said St. Rose parishioner Bill Bickford, who helped launch the St. Rose Bocce Club three years ago. “It’s addictive.”

Bickford was introduced to bocce, an ancient game with roots in Egypt as many as 5,000 years before Christ, as a boy growing up in upstate New York.

“We had a curling league in the winter and bocce in the summer” using the same courts, Bickford explained.

Three years ago, he wanted to start an activity for the adults in the parish and the community, so he approached the city about building a bocce court in one of Murfreesboro’s parks. When the city declined, he went to St. Rose, where he’s been a parishioner since 1964, and the parish gave him the OK.

With the help of a handful of friends, some donations and an investment of $63, they built three gravel courts with wood rails and launched the St. Rose Bocce Club.

The response was quick with St. Rose parishioners and members of other churches in Murfreesboro, some familiar with the game and others newcomers, signing up. This year, the club had two leagues, one playing on Saturday and the other Sunday, with 17 teams and about 80 players, said Bickord, the club’s vice president.

Vinny Agosta Sr. saw the bocce courts at St. Rose when he moved to Murfreesboro two years ago and immediately inquired about them. A native of Sicily, Agosta had played some as a child and regularly as an adult after emigrating to the United States and settling in Brooklyn.

There was a bocce court in his neighborhood that attracted many of the men from Italy, where the game has its greatest popularity, Agosta explained. “We used to play a couple of times a week after work,” he said.

With a roof over the court and fires in 55-gallon drums, they would play even in the winter, he said.

“It’s a beautiful game,” said Agosta, the official scorekeeper for the St. Rose club.

The rules are fairly simple. The courts are approximately 60 feet long and 8 feet wide. The game begins when one of the players tosses a small white ball, called the pallino, down the court. The pallino becomes the target with players earning points for rolling larger balls closest to the pallino.

“It’s a simple game to play, at least by the rules, but it can also be a very challenging game as far as accuracy and skill,” said Jimmy Africano, who grew up near Chicago playing bocce.

Once he saw an article about the St. Rose bocce club in the local newspaper, he quickly joined. When he owned the Italian Market deli and restaurant in Nashville, Africano built a bocce court for his customers. “I’d take my vendors out and we’d talk business over a game of bocce.”

But the St. Rose club didn’t attract only experienced players. Bill Connelly, the president of the club, hadn’t played until he and his wife Carol, were invited to join last spring.

His wife, who is Italian-American, had seen her father and grandfather play when she was a child, Connelly said. “It was new to me as an Irishman.”

The game is great for people of all ages, said Connelly, who recently retired from Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro where he was a professor in the English Department for 37 years, but especially for older folks who want to get out in the sunshine and fresh air. “It doesn’t require strenuous physical exercise,” he said, and even people with physical disabilities can play.

Men and women can play together, Bickford said. “The women have more finesse for this game than our men do,” he said. “The women have more patience.”

The biggest benefits, though, are social, he said. “That’s the history of it,” Connelly said. “You hear about people in Italy eating their big Sunday meal and then going out to the bocce courts.”

“It’s just a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours on a Sunday afternoon … or a Saturday morning,” Connelly said.

“It’s a wonderful way to make friends,” said Edna Scott, who started playing bocce three years ago when Bickford started the club. “We do a lot of socializing while we’re out there.”

Scott plays on the McScotts team with Joann McGowan, Dick McGowan and Dan Leonard. “Bill Bickford put us together the first year we signed up and we’ve been together ever since.”

The St. Rose club charges members a small fee of $10 plus an additional $5 for each league they play in. All members receive a key to the storage shed at the courts and they are free to play any time they want, Bickford explained. Besides the weekend leagues, there are leagues on weeknights in the spring and summer as well.

This year, the club was able to make improvements to the courts, replacing the wood rails with concrete and putting an artificial turf specially made for bocce on one of the three courts. There are picnic benches and canopies at each end of the courts to provide shade and a place to socialize while playing.

But people can play bocce anywhere, Connelly said. “You can play bocce in the back yard. We take our bocce balls to the beach.”

Bickford would like to take bocce to other parishes. “I would love to see other parishes get involved,” Bickford said. He and other members of the St. Rose club would be more than happy to advise folks from other parishes how to build a court and start a league “on a shoestring,” he said. “I just love to get people involved.”

Photos by Andy Telli

Photo 1: Brian Savko prepares to throw in a close game of bocce at the St. Rose courts.

Photo 2: Carol Connelly cheers on a teammate during a game of bocce at St. Rose of Lima Church in Murfreesboro as fellow bocce players Silvia Dryden, Brian Savko and Gregg Cummings Jr. watch. Connelly and Dryden are members of the Bocce Vino Babes team in the St. Rose Bocce Club Sunday afternoon league. Savko and Cummings play for the Holy Rollers.