Christopher Caligiuri travels nationwide to play bocce on clay, crushed rock and even carpet.
Writer: Jane Burns
Photographer: Duane Tinkey
Bocce in Des Moines has a past in yards and festivals on Des Moines’ south side. It’s got a present in popular leagues with waiting lists. And now, it’s got a future with plans to take the popular lawn game with Italian roots into the big time.
In short, bocce is on a roll.
“It could be blowing up real good for Des Moines, Iowa,” said Mario Tumea, who has played the game his whole life. His family’s restaurant, Tumea & Sons, built a bocce court when it opened in 1998 and hosts leagues in spring, summer and fall.
When plans were unveiled last summer for the new Italian-American Cultural Center of Iowa in the former Butler Mansion on Fleur Drive, they included a bocce pavilion. The current plan calls for five courts — four indoors and one outside on the south lawn, built into the hillside during the second phase of the center’s construction. Organizers hope the pavilion will attract locals playing for fun along with skilled players competing at a higher level.
“With this facility, we’ll be capable of holding big tournaments and having a national tournament,” said Jon Turner, a member of the Cultural Center’s Heritage Advisory Board. “We’re excited about that potential.”
LOCAL TRADITION
Of course, it doesn’t take a fancy new pavilion for bocce to catch on here in Central Iowa. The game has been played for generations, particularly among Italian families on the city’s south side.
“A couple of my father’s friends had bocce ball courts,” Tumea said of his dad, Joe. “Thursday night was my father’s night off from the restaurant, and there’d be about 30 to 40 guys and some women who would go up to [Vic] Scavo’s bocce ball court [near the former Scavo Supermarket on Indianola Avenue] and play.”
Bocce was part of the Italian American Heritage Festival that was held annually until the pandemic and will return this fall. The Society of Italian Americans had a bocce court at its building on McKinley Avenue until it sold the building. The most unusual facility was in the basement of the original Johnny’s Hall of Fame Lounge. The sports bar had a dirt and sand bocce court in its basement when it was located at 216 Fourth St. in its early days, until it moved to Court Avenue in 1983.
Turner didn’t grow up playing bocce but has been playing it now for decades. He and some friends bought a small farm in Missouri just after high school and over the years held bocce tournaments there among friends who had gone there to camp. Back home, he even created a hybrid “bocce golf” course in his Beaverdale backyard, where he hosts friendly competitions.
It doesn’t take a deep connection to the game’s past to play it, either locally or on the national level. Christopher Caligiuri grew up on Des Moines’ south side but didn’t play bocce there; he discovered it when he was in graduate school in Seattle.
“I went to the Seattle Italian Festival and just got hooked,” said Caligiuri, who moved back to Des Moines in 2024 after living away for 23 years. “I came back wanting to spread the word about bocce, and I started learning about all these things already here like the Vittoria Lodge [in Ankeny], the Italian-American Cultural Center. It’s funny that I learned about it away from here, but that shows how much people don’t really know about bocce.”
Caligiuri is spreading the word whenever and wherever he can. He taught bocce at the Cultural Center last spring before rooms shut down for construction, and he’ll work with people at Tumea’s when leagues aren’t playing. He also travels to play bocce throughout the United States, sometimes at tournaments with cash prizes. Top matches are broadcast on the streaming Bocce Broadcast Network.
It can be a challenge for Caligiuri to practice, though. Bocce courts vary in their surface — including traditional crushed oyster shells, clay, crushed rock, carpet or synthetic turf — so he has to go to tournament sites early or get creative in finding places to practice. Before a tournament on carpeted courts last fall in Reno, he practiced in a long hall at the John R. Grubb Community YMCA here in Des Moines.
It wasn’t exactly the Palazzo di Bocce in suburban Detroit, the mecca of bocce in the United States, but “at least it [got] me on carpet to practice,” Caligiuri said. While he was there, he took the opportunity to teach the game to curious kids who stopped to watch.
An old photo of a bocce night at Vic Scavo’s hangs at Tumea & Sons. That’s Joe Tumea in the white pants, next to restaurateur Alphonse “Babe” Bisignano holding the bocce ball.
RULES VARY
While bocce surfaces vary, so do the rules from venue to venue or league to league.
For open bocce, the version most common in the United States, the rules are simple even if mastering the game is not. It starts with the tossing of a tennis-ball-sized target ball called a pallino. Then competitors roll larger balls, about the size of a softball, as close to the pallino as possible. That might involve a gentle roll that stops just next to it or smacking their opponent’s ball out of the way. A turn ends after eight balls per team, with points awarded to the closest throws. Games are typically played to 12 points, though totals can vary, and formats range from singles to doubles to four-player teams.
International play, known as punto raffa volo, is faster and more aggressive. Players call their shots and may throw balls into the air — “volo,” meaning flight — to knock opponents’ balls out of position.
The U.S. Bocce Federation says an official court must measure about 13 feet wide and nearly 87 feet long, but recreational courts are shorter.
The measurements matter on paper, but in practice, bocce in Central Iowa has always been less about regulation and more about gathering.
And now it could be getting its moment in the sun when it moves to the Cultural Center, giving a more prominent home to the game that has been a part of the community for generations. It will give people, Italian or not, an additional reason to come to the Cultural Center, which is scheduled to open in October.
“It’s a way to have more people there and bring vitality,” Turner said. “It’s the perfect time to be doing it. Bocce ball is coming along.”
Architectural renderings for the Italian-American Cultural Center of Iowa on Fleur Drive include indoor and outdoor bocce courts carved into the south lawn. Renderings: RDG Planning & Design
Get rolling
You don’t have to wait for the new bocce courts to open this fall at the Italian-American Cultural Center of Iowa. Here are a few places to play right now:
Bartender’s Handshake
3615 Ingersoll Ave.
Patrons can play a game or two on a small court on the back patio.
Scornovacca’s
1930 SE 14th St.
The restaurant hosts leagues on its back patio during warm-weather months.
Smash Park
6625 Coachlight Drive, West Des Moines
Bocce is one of several outdoor options, along with shuffleboard, pickleball, cornhole and various lawn games. If you’re feeling ambitious, challenge your friends to a pentathlon.
Tumea & Sons
1501 SE First St.
Fourteen two-player teams gather on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays in the spring, summer and fall. On other nights, the courts are open for anyone. “We actually get some people who come down on Sundays when we’re closed and play, which is OK,” Mario Tumea said.
