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Amid Italian festival excitement, ancestry fuels bocce competition
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Paul Sauline of Struthers was among many participants playing bocce at Warren’s Italian-American Heritage Festival. The game came from ancient Rome and the tournament can draw a couple of hundred people. The fest runs through Sunday.
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
To Steve Ficeti, the bocce tournament at the Italian-American Heritage Festival on Courthouse Square is a great combination of competition and ancestry.
Having learned the game at age 7 and starting to play competitively at 14, he loves the adrenaline rush that comes from a good match. He’s been playing in it the past 12 years.
As chairman of the tournament the past six years, the 28-year-old Warren man loves that the game came to America from ancient Rome and that it draws so many people to the festival.
“It’s like golf — It gets real quiet when you roll the ball, and then it’s real loud if it’s a good shot. It’s high energy, real positive,” he said.
The tournament, which began Thursday night and continues until the last day of the festival Sunday, can draw crowds of a couple hundred people, he said.
“It’s one of the few games where you don’t have to be an athlete,” he said. “You can get the whole family involved. There’s one guy, 92, who walks up to the line and throws his ball.”
Each of the 24 teams entered in the double-elimination tournament usually attracts a following of fans, and with music playing nearby amid the excitement of the festival, it’s a good time, he said.
“It’s probably the second biggest draw of the festival,” he said, second to the musical performers who come from around the world.
Bocce involves two teams of four people, each having a two-pound ball to roll in a special court permanently built next to the courthouse many years ago.
A small white ball — the pill — is used to start the game by rolling it onto the playing surface. The ensuing rolls involve trying to get close to the pill or knock the other team’s balls away from it.
Hitting the other team’s balls hard is called spocking, while using a finesse throw to get your ball close is called pointing, Ficeti said.
Points are awarded based on which team has the most balls closest to the pill at the end of each inning. Scoring is a little different from cornhole or horse shoes: In bocce, the first team to score 13 wins, and only one team scores any points per frame.
This year, the winner gets $1,000 in prize money. Frequently the same several teams are near the top every year, and it’s nice when annual rivals meet up, he said.
The winner usually has to play between six and nine matches to get to the championship.
Bocce is associated with Italy because it was popularized by soldiers of the Roman Empire, Ficeti said, but the tournament isn’t an Italian sport only.
Teams of Irish, Greek and other nationalities play every year, and there is one team made up of women.