Bocce Club of Greater New Orleans Is Coming Back

I remember when I returned home a week after hurricane Katrina ravaged our city. Like most residents, my wife and I left town for Katrina and we wound up in Pensacola, Florida at my brother-in-laws house. He shared his home with fifteen other relatives and friends who exited the city in haste. The minute I learned electric power was restored to my house, my wife and I gathered our belongings, and we were off to New Orleans. Interstate 10 was closed at Slidell because large sections of the bridges over Lake Pontchartrain were destroyed.  We detoured to Covington and returned to Metairie via the Causeway.  We were told that only emergency vehicles were being allowed into the city, but we were allowed to proceed by an army national guardsman. Once we entered Metairie, our first stop was the Bocce Club.

The exterior of the clubhouse showed signs of damage with bricks, rocks, parts of the building façade and sheet metal lying around the parking lot. I opened the front door and saw much of the suspended ceiling on the floor and water damage in abundance. Upon further inspection, I found a roof hatch had blown off and rain had poured into the building. I later found the hatch in the vacant lot next to the Club. It was bent and damaged, but was repairable.  I straightened it to the point where I could put it back where it belonged. We had only wind and rain damage and that was refreshing. While flood water did extensive damage to the Holiday Inn motel across the avenue form the Club, as well as other surrounding buildings, the Bocce Club’s floor elevation was high enough to avoid flooding.

The damage I described was all repairable over a next few weeks. The damage hurricane Katrina did to our membership has taken much longer to repair. Because of the extensive flooding to the Greater New Orleans area, over 50 % of our membership had relocated outside of our area. We no longer had adequate membership to hold leagues. Our income to cover the overhead for our Clubhouse with three air conditioned indoor Bocce courts was no longer adequate. It was obvious that if our club was to survive, those of us who remained after Katrina, had to do more. Of course, many of us had our own damage to repair, and time and effort was limited. Our membership, which numbered less than thirty (30) people, made a decision that we would keep the Club opened three days a week and to start recruiting new members.

We have grown slowly to where we are today. We now have Bocce Leagues on Thursday evening and we offer open play on Wednesday and sometimes on Sunday evenings. We are using a number of methods to recruit:

1. We are advertising for members on New Orleans.com. Their staff writer wrote and excellent blog titled,” THE BOCCE CLUB OF GREATER NEW ORLEANS INVITES YOU TO JOIN THEIR RANKS.” It is a good story with pictures, and I invite anyone interested to read the article.
2. Our new president, Salvatore Bonomo along with members Bob Sagona and Vincent Liberto promoted an open house where we gave away free beer to induce interested citizens to visit our club.  This event was so successful in attracting new members, we plan to hold more open houses in the future.
3. For the past four years we are holding a spaghetti and homemade Italian sausage dinner as a fundraiser. We call it “Spaghetti and Bocce.” Not only does the event help us earn needed revenue for the Club, it helps generate new prospective members.
4. We have placed a large banner in front of our building inviting people to visit and play bocce.
5. Bob Sagona had business cards printed and placed them on counters of retail outlets selling Italian food.  The card invites people to call us and to join the fun and to join the Bocce Club.
6. I am personally promoting a tournament among my professional business organization that has several chapters in the Greater New Orleans area. This tournament will probably take place in January. Hopefully, it will expose more people to the sport and produce a few more members.

While we still have a long way to go in recruiting new members, we have a plan and a few excited and energetic members who are actively promoting our club.  Our numbers are slowly increasing as more people move back to our area and we are actively recruiting.  We are currently looking for a sponsor to help fund a big money tournament to be held at the Bocce Club. We believe it will be a win-win sponsorship with nationwide advertising exposure that will attract quality teams from around the nation.  Besides, most people only need an excuse to visit New Orleans.