Franklin Park bocce courts near completion
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
A Maryville Parks & Recreation crew worked Wednesday morning to smooth out the pea-gravel playing surface at two nearly complete bocce courts in Franklin Park. The courts, which will usually be open to the public, were built in a joint project undertaken by Parks & Rec and the North Area region of Missouri Special Olympics. Both courts are expected to be ready for play sometime in early August.
Two new bocce courts in Franklin Park, a Maryville Parks & Recreation facility located along the east side of the 700 block of North Main Street, are nearing completion and should be ready for play in early August.
Workers smoothed out the pea gravel playing surface at the 12-foot-wide by 60-foot-long courts early Wednesday. Parks & Rec Director Aaron Dobson said remaining work includes further compacting the gravel, planting new grass worn away during construction, completing some final dirt work and notching the courts’ wooden sides with appropriate ball-placement marks.
Dobson said plans to create a playing surface from old artificial turf from Bearcat Stadium had to be abandoned when it was found the turf strips were the wrong size.
That won’t affect the quality of play, he said, since regulation bocce courts traditionally consist of a variety of materials, including natural soil, clay, asphalt, fine gravel, crushed granite and oyster shells.
Maryville Parks & Recreation and the North Area region of Missouri Special Olympics partnered on the bocce courts project, with Special Olympics providing a $1,200 grant earmarked for creating new competitive sports opportunities for local athletes with cognitive and developmental disabilities.
The grant meant the only real expense for Parks & Rec has been the staff time required for construction.
Franklin Park was chosen for the courts due to its central location and ease of access from the street, a plus for players coping with mobility issues and other physical challenges.
Games similar to bocce — an ancient ancestor of bowling — have been popular across Europe since the time of the Roman Empire. The sport in its current form was popularized by Italian immigrants and has spread to Australia, North America and South America.
The game is played with eight grapefruit-sized balls — four to a team — and one smaller target ball called a pallino.
Competition generally takes place between two four-player teams with the game divided into frames during which only one team can score. One point is awarded for each ball rolled closer to the pallino than the closest ball of the opposing team.
The first team to score 16 points is usually considered the winner.
According to North Area Special Olympics, there are about 50 Special Olympians in and around Maryville and at least 1,000 other participants across the region, which embraces 27 north Missouri counties.
Bocce is increasingly popular in the North Area, where an aging athlete population has created a demand for less-strenuous “lifetime” activities.
The highest-profile Special Olympics event in Maryville is probably the annual North Area basketball tournament, which attracts more than 200 players each January and generally takes place in Northwest Missouri State University’s Bearcat Arena.
Other local Special Olympics competitions regularly include track and field and bowling.
