Liberty Station Knolls

I had the pleasure of running into a group of bocce oldheads who corrected some pronounciation (“bow chay”, accented i in polino). I’ve been coming to this section of the park for a few years, specifically for the small hills that have an excellent overlook of the nearby bay.

These folks meet up every Friday and play into the afternoon. At the end of the day they play what they call “Jungle Bocce” outside of their rope pitch on the small hills that I keep coming back for. I love that the more traditionalists are still a little iffy about using grass as a surface over dg and they think Jungle Bocce is a little worth looking down on. It feels right that someone disapproves of my whole jam here.

Their rope game is a little different than how I’ve played. The shape is a rectangle, with the long ends about 48 feet and the short ends about 24, divided in half with construction flags. The person throwing the polino picks the left or right half of the short end of the pitch, and for the remainder of that round, everyone throws from that side. I hadn’t played with an out-of-bounds mechanic before, and I actually enjoyed the constraint. They play that the polino can go out of bounds after a successful first pitch, but any other balls going out of bounds are then disqualified.

I’m glad I asked, apparently when playing in the wooden sandbox, hitting the side walls are not considered out of bounds, but hitting the back board is.

Their set of bocce balls were also larger diameter and heavier than the set I have. I found this to keep a straighter line, as well as afford a bit more ‘choice’ about total energy, or how far you throw.

The pitch they use is flat, but it does have quite a variety of grass textures that change throughout the year. Apparently in the summer, all the rolls go very very far.

It might have been the little bit of smoke, but I sure get stoked on competative line integrals over a noisy vector field!

Check out this spot, just south of the parking over at Liberty Station Knolls on OpenStreetMap