Happy opening day of bocce!
Wait, let me rephrase that … Happy (kind of) opening day of bocce (not really).
I’ve got to admit I have been putting off making any bocce announcements, because I just don’t know what is going to end up happening. But now that we have reached our planned opening day the time has come (and actually long since past) to make some kind of announcement.
My kind of, sort of, official stance on bocce is that I really don’t know what is going to happen, so I’m going to rely on people that know more about this than I do like the mayor and our community health care professionals both of which I am lucky enough to be able to speak with regularly. My guess is we will play bocce at some point this season, even its its all 1 on 1 with everybody using their own set of balls. But that is not stet in stone.
Here are all the factors in play …
Our league fits into phase 4 of New York’s reopening plan, which if everything goes well, will happen a little less than 2 months from now.
If you know anything about our league you know that we’ve never been scared to break the rules, so the reopening rules in and of themselves are not enough to postpone our season. But we also don’t just go around breaking rules to be stupid or destructive (mostly we do it to drink in public).
There are some pragmatic problems with starting the league as well.
Specifically, we don’t own the land we play bocce on. That land is owned by Coleman’s and the Ukrainian National Home who let us play for free, and mow it for us, so that we will frequent their business and spend money there. Right now their businesses are closed and we can’t go spend money, so they don’t have much of an incentive to mow the lawn for us, or even allow us to use their property for something that could potentially spread disease.
Also the port-a-potty company isn’t renting to places for social gatherings, just construction.
Finally, my own personal priority in all of this is with the medical professionals in our community – meaning doctors, nurses, and everyone else it takes (and there are many) to make sick people well again. We have many medical professionals in our league, and a lot more of us (myself included) are married to or otherwise living with medical professionals. These are people I care a lot about. What they have always done has been admirable, but they never had to really worry for their own health at work before this. Now they do. There are dozens of medical professionals in Syracuse alone who contracted covid at work. I would not want to be responsible for the spread of that disease to even one person, because the medical professional who has to deal with them could come from our own Turbo Bocce family, and that is a risk I don’t want to take.
Now on to the more positive side of things …
We play outside which is much safer than being inside.
Unlike most sports we can social distance fairly well if we really want to and still play.
I am willing to make you two promises right now. One, Turbo Bocce will play games again. Two, when its safe we will throw a big party and celebrate the hell out of being able to be together again.
If you are bummed out about this news, if you feel depressed, if you feel like you can’t do the social distancing thing anymore feel free to reach out to me, my phone number is 315-254-3639 I’d love to hear from you.
Stay strong. Enjoy the sunshine.
Paul
www.turbobocce.com
