{"id":10319,"date":"2015-04-09T01:27:21","date_gmt":"2015-04-09T05:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=10319"},"modified":"2015-04-22T17:35:39","modified_gmt":"2015-04-22T21:35:39","slug":"aurora-bocce-showcased-in-regional-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-bocce-showcased-in-regional-tournament\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora bocce showcased in regional tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte<\/strong><\/p>\n

One needed only a trip to Richmond Hill last weekend to prove that the sport of bocce is growing at a rapid pace in Canada.<\/p>\n

As featured last month in The Auroran, Special Olympics Ontario \u2013 Aurora entered their first competition against out-of-town athletes. Two teams of four took to the courts at the Rouge Woods Community Centre last Saturday, travelling the shortest distance while joining teams from both Barrie and Durham.<\/p>\n

Friends, family, volunteers and athletes alike packed the gym featuring a handful of indoor bocce courts for a day of sportsmanship and cheering on the \u201cAurora Rollers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Technical coach Peter Cellitti was one of those volunteers. He has been playing bocce since the age of twelve, reaching the world level numerous times while taking his game to locations like Argentina, Italy, and California.<\/p>\n

He says the opportunity to play on a real court is a great learning experience for the players.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t get the full experience playing where we do. They need an actual facility to really learn at the best pace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Currently, the Rollers\u2019 facilities are housed on the hardwood flooring of Lynet Hall at Aurora\u2019s Our Lady of Grace Church, as there are no indoor bocce courts in town.<\/p>\n

But the Rollers, most of whom also take to the outdoor courts of the Aurora Seniors\u2019 Centre in the summer, don\u2019t let it get them down.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re very involved,\u201d said Cellitti. \u201cAll of our players really get into it\u2026like anyone else, they don\u2019t like to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the Division A bracket, Aurora missed the final round by a tiebreaker, earning a 0-1-2 record along the way. The Division B bracket saw a Rollers team make it to the finals, but a powerhouse Richmond Hill team was too much for the budding bowlers.<\/p>\n

Cellitti admits that, like most Canadians (athletes or not), his players were not very knowledgeable of the game when they took it up. However, he was happy to announce that they picked up the skills and strategy needed quite quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not just throwing the ball, there\u2019s strategy behind it. You have to take into consideration distance, speed, ball placement\u2026and they\u2019ve done that quite well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The competition in York Region is just heating up. One team of elite players will be sent to Seneca College\u2019s King Campus at the end of April to compete against sixteen other teams from around the world in the Special Olympics International Bocce Tournament.<\/p>\n

For more information on the program, visit www.aurora.specialolympicsontario.ca<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jake Courtepatte One needed only a trip to Richmond Hill last weekend to prove that the sport of bocce is growing at a rapid pace in Canada. As featured last month in The Auroran, Special Olympics Ontario \u2013 Aurora entered their first competition against out-of-town athletes. Two teams of four took to the courts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10291,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/2015-04-09-15.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2Gr","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 23:38:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}