BATH

“I never dreamed this would happen,” said Jean Anthony of Bath. “Everyone told me it wouldn’t catch on.”

Anthony is the founder of the Bocce Buddies of Bath, a group of senior citizens who play bocce twice weekly at the Senior Center on Floral Street.

Before Anthony brought new knowledge of the game back from a winter holiday in Florida, most of the activities for seniors were table card games, with line dancing once a week and occasional trips to local attractions. No one in Bath had even heard of bocce, let alone played it.

But Anthony was determined, and she and two other players put together moveable bocce courts that could be rolled up and stored between games.

Bocce, for the uninitiated, is a game of Italian origin, played with two sets of large wooden balls and one small wooden ball.

The small wooden ball — the white pallino — is rolled out first, then the four wooden green and red balls are bowled out onto the court.

The color closest to the pallino is the winner of the round. If a green ball, say, is closest to the pallino, every green ball that is closer than a red one counts as one point. If all the winning side’s balls are closest to the pallino, the side can get as many as four points in one round.

Ordinarily, there are eight players per game, but there’s been a surprising, overwhelming response to bocce in Bath.

“We’ve got 20, 25 people playing per game,” Anthony said. “We have six people playing on a side, instead of two.”

That means throwing out all the rules, but it’s all good … the people who come to play are getting a form of gentle exercise and honing a shark-like competitive spirit even though they might be using walkers, pulling oxygen tanks with them or can’t stand up at all, while enjoying one another’s company.

Anthony says that’s just as important as the game for some of the seniors.

“Some of them don’t get out any other time except to go shopping or to the doctor,” she said. “But they come to bocce every week, sometimes twice a week.”

The Buddies had a lot of help in the last eight years, Anthony says.

There are now outdoor bocce courts, built in 2006 with donated labor and supplies from Jack A. Shaw and Sons, a Woolwich excavating company and supplier of gravel and other products. The group has plans to make them a little more “senior friendly” in the near future.

Most of the seniors play indoors, on a grass carpet with wooden railings built by two of the members. Starbucks provides them with coffee.

Skip Cahill gave them a check to buy the bocce balls. The railroad gave them old ties to make the outdoor railings. Another player built a roller to keep the stone dust on the outdoor courts easy to play on.

Several of the players attended a bocce tournament a few years ago, and the leader of the bocce group in Massachusetts came up to visit them, bringing some of his players. Anthony obtained a grant from the Davenport Foundation to have bocce courts built in the South End Park, and now there are apple trees and stone benches near the courts.

Anthony and her group have been invited to conferences on healthy aging, and have been asked to set up bocce programs in local schools and in other senior centers.

Bocce in Bath — and elsewhere in the Mid-coast — is now officially a thing.

Aug. 9 marked the eighth anniversary of the Bocce Buddies of Bath. Anthony says that there are more than 40 people who have signed up to play bocce, although they don’t come every week. Anthony said that given the ages of some of the players — the oldest ones in their mid- 90s — she didn’t want to hold out for the 10th anniversary before having a big celebration. So, the group held a luncheon on Friday after a special bocce game Friday morning.

People who have helped the group over the years, including Jason Shaw, were invited to come to the luncheon and be recognized. The original players were also recognized with tiny tiara-shaped combs and a special pen.

In a turnabout, Anthony herself was recognized by her fellow players with a tiara, a gift certificate to Skillins to help her start her garden next spring, and a pot of white mums in a red pot on a field of green leaves … bocce colors.

“To our next eight years!” Anthony said.

The Bocce Buddies of Bath wasted no time. As soon as the tables were cleared, they were back on the court.

ghamilton@timesrecord.com