Bocce brings out Sneak Attack at Special Olympics BC Summer Games

It hasn’t been around long as a sport for Prince George Special Olympics athletes to try but the numbers don’t lie.

Bocce is booming.

The local contingent has grown from eight players in 2024 to 17 now playing the game regularly, a year after it was introduced to Prince George Special Olympics.

“It was just a new sport, so I figured, try it, and I did like it,” said Adrian Rosen, part of the four-player Prince George Sneak Attack. “I like the atmosphere, just being outside.

“The hardest thing is judging the distance.”

All four members of the Prince George Sneak Attack team that represented Cariboo-North East Region 8 — Rosen, Isaac Goudal, Ruth Caldwell and Tara Chaisson — are also 10-pin bowlers.

“I think it’s easy for bowlers to transition to the bocce fields,” said Sneak Attack head coach Waylon Becker. “We’ve been practising for this event since November at the PGYSA indoor soccer field at Duchess Park and when the snow melted, we transitioned to grass.”

Becker works as a vocational rehabilitation specialist for Northern Health. His clients are people with mental health issues and substance addictions. Every day at his job he’s reminded of the power of sport to improve the lives of the people who play and that’s what keeps coming back as a volunteer coach with the Prince George bocce program.

“It’s huge, we need sports in our lives,” he said. “No matter what age you are, what ability you have — sport brings out confidence, empathy, and how to work as a team player,” Becker said.

A friend of Becker’s introduced him to Special Olympics coaching years ago. He first got invited to floor hockey and also coached soccer before he got behind the bocce program. He likes how inclusive bocce is.

“(People with) any skillset, any disability can participate, that’s what’s so unique about this sport,” said Becker. “There’s a lot of strategy involved.

“Our team is playing pretty well, considering the number of years the other teams have invested in bocce. This is our second year and I’m quite excited and overwhelmed with the skillset our current team is showing right now. This is a great time for all our athletes.”

The rules of bocce are similar to lawn bowling. One player starts the end by throwing a white smaller ball called a pallino (jack) which becomes the target for everybody’s throws in that particular end. Points are awarded based on the proximity of each shot to the jack and players try to knock the ball of their opponents away from the target. Game duration at the Special Olympics BC Summer Games was 45 minutes or the first team to score 16 points, whichever came first.

It's a relatively new sport to Special Olympics. It was first demonstrated in 2007 and became part of the Special Olympics Canada Summer Games in Vancouver in 2014. This was the third time it was contested at the provincial level in BC.

Bocce has no provincial sport organization, so Leslie Thornley made the trip to Prince George provide her insights as Special Olympics BC’s manager of community development for the Okanagan.

She arrived Wednesday and gave a crash course on the rules and scorekeeping to a group of 27 bocce volunteers. The event drew 24 teams and they played on 10 courts set up on the Prince George Soccer Association field south of the clubhouse. She said the event was blessed by volunteers who originally had signed up just for one shift but ended up being there for all the games.

“We brought in really for the lifestyle, realizing that a lot of our bowlers bowl through the winter, and what do they do in the summer? It was a great conversion,” said Thornley.  “It’s a great spot for some of our aging athletes and there’s four on a team so a lot can play.”

Special Olympics BC invested in portable kits that use bright yellow strapping to mark a 60-foot by 12-foot court that can be unfolded on any patch of grass. The ease of setting up the court made bocce available to every community.

Sneak Attack went 0-4 in the tournament. They lost their opener 13-6 to a seasoned crew from Campbell River, , and also lost 8-6 to Kamloops Bobcats and 5-4 to Surrey Rockstars, who went on to win the gold medal over Campbell River.

“We’re playing as well as we can be, there’s some really good teams here,” said Chiasson. “We try our best and the whole point is we must be brave in our attempts.

“It’s definitely a different sport. It’s all about friends, teammates, and I think our team knows each other pretty well.”

In the bronze medal game on Saturday, Kamloops scored two in the final end to defeat the host Sneak Attack 10-8. Prince George was coming on strong, thinking they were about to start another end when the five-minute bell suddenly sounded, which ended the game.

Sneak Attack qualified for the BC Summer Games last year at the regional event in Burns Lake.. Caldwell, the team captain, said their loss to Campbell River to start the day Saturday was tough to take.

“They had our butt this morning,” Caldwell said. “they’ve been playing longer than us. It was intense competition. We’ve got to start remembering to re-zone everything and get our brains focused and not try to overdo it.”

Caldwell has tried a variety of sports, including soccer, curling, powerlifting, track and field and club fit, and she still likes to bowl but likes the change of scenery bocce offers.  

“It’s a new sport, you’ve got to try something new every time,” Caldwell said. “I like being able to hang out with these guys. We know each other and know where we should be putting it, plus we know our strengths and weaknesses.  I know some of the other players, one from Burns Lake, two from Campbell River.”

Despite hosting the BC Summer Games, there was not much of a home advantage for the Prince George team because all the athletes were billeted in city high schools and they all slept in classrooms for the three nights of the Summer Games

“I’d rather be sleeping in my own bed,” said Caldwell. “If you’re facing the outside with the lights on, you can’t sleep. It’s not good.”

There was one perk for the host team from Cariboo-North East, as Caldwell found out at the opening ceremony. She’s been through five BC Games competitions in various sports, representing Region 8, the last of eight zones in BC to be introduced, and she’s used to always having to sit near the back at provincial winter or summer games openings. But that was not the case at the CN Centre opening event on Friday.

“We were able to sit up front for everything else and that made it more fun,” she said.