No arrests made in bocce competition against law enforcement
Tracey Pereira throws a bocce ball as the all star players watch on. Photos by Abby Van Selous
Resource officer David Tavares throws a bocce ball.
Cody Flynn, 13, rolls a bocce ball down the hall.
Jackson Cale, 13, keeps his eye on the bocce ball.
Bill Garcia measures the distance between bocce balls.
Helen Mitchell watches her ball roll down the hall.
Bill Garcia keeps track of the match’s score.
Tracey Pereira throws a bocce ball as the all star players watch on. Photos by Abby Van Selous
Resource officer David Tavares throws a bocce ball.
Cody Flynn, 13, rolls a bocce ball down the hall.
Jackson Cale, 13, keeps his eye on the bocce ball.
Bill Garcia measures the distance between bocce balls.
Helen Mitchell watches her ball roll down the hall.
Bill Garcia keeps track of the match’s score.
In the halls of Dartmouth Middle School, the unified all stars bocce team had a standoff against law enforcement officers, which ended with no arrests made.
“At first I was like, ‘Oh, no, they’re going to arrest me if we win,” said eighth-grader Jackson Cale, 13. “They were really good competition.”
Cale joined the bocce team after his mom was “begging me to come,” he said, but after looking into the sport, he realized it “actually sounds pretty fun.”
Pointing to teammate Cody Flynn, 13, Cale said, “I’m surprised they won because of this guy.”
Flynn is in eighth grade and started playing bocce with the unified team last year, which was also the first year of the program.
“I was kind of a late entry, almost, and started playing, and it’s really fun,” he said.
At the match on Monday, Dec. 8, Flynn played on the officers’ team to balance the number of players on either side.
In the past, the officers have played against the unified football and volleyball teams, but this was the first year they competed against the bocce team.
“This event happened because this year … we had one practice and the next week was our tournament.” said Helen Mitchell, who helped organize the bocce program and the game against the officers.
The unified bocce program started just as an after school program with just Monday practices, but the team also competes against other schools in tournaments.
“[The tournament this year] was so early in the season that we thought it would be fun for the kids to have something later in the season, after we had been playing for a few Mondays in a row,” she added.
Mitchell competed in the match along with David Tavares, the middle school’s resource officer, officer Jorge Silva, Amanda Tavares, an elementary school resource officer, and the middle school’s nurse, Tracy Pereira.
“With any ability you can play bocce, so it’s kind of a nice event [for] everybody,” David Tavares said.
He added that it’s also a great opportunity to interact with students and that to him, just having fun with the students mattered more than winning the match.
“We’re all about the community, so bringing them in, I think it’s important for the kids to see that as well,” Mitchell said.
She added that she “absolutely” hopes the match against the officers becomes an annual event and that it “definitely will because we’re all about community.”
The team will play against the middle school staff for their last practice of the season, but as for the game against the officers, Flynn said it was “good, considering the fact that we won.”
While his team lost the game, Cale said he was “glad” the officers won.
He added, “I could have gotten arrested.”
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