Before the Italian Fest bocce tournament started I said on Facebook “Last year we won 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 5th place. Lets add 4th to the collection!” In retrospect I should have clarified. I wanted us to win 1st, 2nd, 3rd, AND 4th, and 5th too. Not just fourth … but just fourth is what we won. Congrats to Mike, Allison, Monica, and Tim for doing better than anybody else in the league, but lets face it, as a league we earned ourselves a big slice of failure cake.
After winning Italian Fest 8 years in a row, we have now failed to win it 3 out of the last 4 years. This is a strange trend, because the competition in the league keeps getting better and better. I have a theory that we are becoming specialized in how we play, and thus actually getting worse at Italian Fest bocce even though we are improving at Turbo Bocce. So what are we going to do about it? I have an idea …
The Friday before the Italian Fest tournament, the bocce courts are set up and local politicians play a grudge match against local reporters. Other than that the bocce courts are unused. So I asked around, and now all the unused courts are ours to play on. I say we do our own little tournament on Friday before the big one Saturday (maybe winners get free meatballs and beers at Wolffs?). If you can’t make it, no biggie, but it will give those who can make it a chance to get used to rolling on the courts and making shots off the walls. Then we should be ready to step in Saturday and dominate! Next year’s festival will be Friday the 13th and Saturday the 14th of September … save the date!
The Italian Fest bocce tournament is the last leg of the triple crown, so with that tournament done and dusted we can do a count and see who won!
If you need a reminder, the triple crown of bocce consists of the three biggest and most competitive annual bocce tournaments held in Syracuse, and is comprised of a one on one tournament, a two on two tournament, and a four on four tournament.
The first triple crown event was the one on one tournament held Saturday July 14th HERE is a recap if you don’t remember much about it.
We give 3 points for coming in first place, 2 points for coming in second place, and 1 point for coming in third place at each of the three competitions.
1 on 1 points totals:
John Bauman – 3
Andy Ingalls – 2
Anson Zeppetello– 1
The second triple crown event was the Turbo Bocce championship, held Saturday, August 18th
Turbo Bocce Championship point totals:
Colin Donahoe – 3
Mike Aylesworth – 3
John Bauman – 2
Jim Whipple– 2
Bryan Mullane – 1
Greg Griffo – 1
The final leg of the triple crown was the Italian Fest tournament, and (I really hate writing this) nobody won any points.
Here are the total triple crown standings for the year. Congratulations to everybody! Its a true accomplishment to earn even a single point in the triple crown standings
John Bauman – 5 points
Colin Donahoe – 3
Mike Aylesworth – 3
Andy Ingalls – 2
Jim Whipple – 2
Anson Zeppetello – 1
Bryan Mullane – 1
Greg Griffo – 1
Congrats to John Bauman, your total of 5 triple crown points ranks pretty high on the all time list:
Bryan Mullane – 9 (2017)
Phil Martino – 8 (2014)
George Christou – 6 (2014)
Greg Griffo – 6 (2017)
Phil Martino – 6 (2016)
John Bauman – 5 (2018)
Robb Jones – 5 (2013)
Mike Aylesworth – 4 (2016)
Tim Maynard – 4 (2013)
Rob Mead – 4 (2013)
Andy Ingalls – 4 (2014)
