Mary Langenfeld
Alex Wagner throws a bocce ball while Pat Morrow, Jan Barwick and Carol Veloskey (from left) observe.
Pat Morrow arrives early at the East Side Club’s bocce court to get a few practice throws in. She knows she’ll need it.
Morrow’s team, “Plum Crazy,” will face off against the eighth-ranked team this Tuesday evening in the club’s popular 64-team bocce league.
“So the pressure is on,” Morrow says in her subtle Southern accent.
But Morrow doesn’t let the challenge get in the way of having fun, as she holds a margarita in a plastic cup in one hand and a green bocce ball in the other. “Bocce at the East Side Club provides me with an opportunity to be outside with a beautiful view of Madison from Lake Monona,” she says.
The players start to arrive around 6 p.m. on a postcard-perfect June day. Some make a beeline for the tiki bar. Others check the handwritten schedule for court assignments and to chat with league organizer Gary Spaeni, who is perched on a picnic table next to a grill where brats are available for purchase.
Bocce was played as early as 5000 B.C. by Egyptians using polished rocks. Italian immigrants brought the game to the United States in the ’40s.
To play, you need a set of balls, typically four green and four red, and a smaller white ball called the “jack.” One team throws the jack, and then play alternates, with players trying to roll their balls closest to the jack. Points are awarded to the team with the balls nearest the jack, and the game lasts until someone reaches 11 points.
Originally from Oklahoma, Morrow met her bocce teammates — Alex Wagner, Judy Brown and Jan Barwick — at UW Hospital, where they all worked in the psychiatry ward.
Wagner and Brown, both cancer survivors, are now retired. “Pat’s the baby,” Wagner teases. In addition to bocce, the women knit and play cards together. “There is something that bonds you when you work on psych,” says Wagner.
Spaeni grew up in Madison and learned about the game on a trip to New Zealand. He started the league in 2008 and expanded it to two nights, Mondays and Tuesdays, in 2011 in order to expand it to 64 teams. Since 2012, there has been a waiting list for new teams to join.
Spaeni, retired from the Dane County Juvenile Court Program, says that the coolest thing about the league is the demographic. “There are people from age 25 to 85,” Spaeni says. “And everybody gets along.” Spaeni, his wife and another couple set up the courts each week, and Spaeni keeps the stats for the 12-week season.
Morrow explains to her teammates that although they know me as their competitor from a previous night (I play bocce, too), tonight I am here as a reporter to write about “all us old bags from UW Hospital.”
Morrow is the only one on the team who had ever played bocce before league play started on June 7. Yet, her teammates are naturals. And they cheer just as much for their opponents as their own team.
Spaeni says that there are a lot of people who play bocce at the East Side Club who had never participated in league play of any kind before, and that often “they are the most enthusiastic.”
“Here anybody can be as good as anybody,” Spaeni says. “At least once a night someone makes a good throw.”
This evening Plum Crazy wins the first game and loses the next two. But Morrow keeps a different kind of score: “For me, every time I play I am a winner.”
Number of teams the league started with in 2008: 12
Number of teams in 2016: 64
Early Roman game equipment: Coconuts brought from Africa and later balls carved out of olive wood.
Reason some European countries banned bocce centuries ago: As the game gained popularity, it began to threaten national security because it took time away from archery practice.
How the game regained popularity: After unifying Italy, Giuseppe Garibaldi held the first Bocce Olympiad in Athens, Greece, in 1896.