5 minute read
Rolling on
by Michael J. DeCicco
It's called lawn bowling, and it's not as simple as the indoor bowling game of rolling a ball across a flat floor to strike down ten pins. The player rolls a “bowl,” an almost-spherical ball with flattened sides that is smaller and lighter than a bowling ball, toward a small, harder white ball called a “jack” on a bowling green that measures 4.3 to 5.8 meters wide and 31 to 40 meters long. The player who rolls more of their bowls closest to the jack without moving it gets the most points.
Maurice LaFond, a retired US Marine Corp. veteran, age 71, has been playing the game since 1993 and sings the sport’s praises. “It’s like four different games,” he said. “It’s a little like golf and like bowling. And like chess because you can roll your ball to block your opponent from getting their bowl close to the jack.”
He said he likes playing the sport because it’s easy to learn but a challenge to perfect. The greens are like the putting greens in golf, with a surface that’s not entirely flat and smooth. The bowls have a “bias” that the player must use to roll the ball in just the right direction.
“And what I like about it is that it is makes no difference whether you're right-handed or left-handed or a man or woman or a child or what your physical ability level is. You can play this sport.”
In 2022, the Hazelwood Center, a 23-acre park located on Clark's Point, opened greens that it had recently rehabilitated for both lawn bowling and croquet. Free learn-to-play workshops for both sports quickly followed, as did their popularity in New Bedford. The city croquet players were represented in the Massachusetts State Croquet tournament on July 15 and 16 this summer. Six three-person New Bedford teams played in the Northeastern Division of Bowl USA at Hazelwood on August 12, LaFond noted.
New Bedford Parks and Recreation director Mary Rapoza said that since the free lessons started, the attendance has been building every week. “All ages are participating,” she said. “From a 95-year-old man to a 17-year-old." (LaFond’s grandson who has played the game since age 11.)
The city’s future goals for the Hazelwood greens will be to expand youth participation, Rapoza added. It is reaching out to local youth groups who want to learn and play the sport, whether they be school groups or the boy or girl scouts. She encourages these groups to contact her.
Going greens
Joann Tschaen is considered by some as the Hazelwood greens and bowling league’s founder, but she said the sport's history goes much further back. The sport came to New Bedford when the English brought "Bowling on the Green" with them when they arrived to work in the city’s textile factories. It was played seven days a week back then, she said, and it was mainly a man’s sport. The games were played at Hazelwood Park, and the porch of what is now the community center would always be filled with male spectators; the women and children would sit in the beach wagons beyond the fence to get their own view of competition.
Back then, she said, there were tournaments and trophies and celebrations afterward at the Belmont Club across the street. But the sport aged out; its male enthusiasts grew old and died. The sport completely disappeared by the early 1970s.
Enter Tschaen and her brother, Dan, whose father played the sport. With an inherited love of the sport, and after finding some of their father’s old equipment in an attic, they started an after-school and summer league at Victory Park on Brock Avenue (once known as the Poor Farm). Youngsters passing by on bicycles were drawn in to participate. In 2004, Tschaen and her brother started formally teaching them the sport. She enjoyed the lessons so much she did it again the next year and the year after that.
In 2013, she joined forces with the new Director of Parks Recreation & Beaches, Rapoza, to start renovating the Hazelwood greens. That led to the grand reopening in 2022, and that's when a Greens Coordinator, Anne Marie Briand, whose own father once played the sport, was hired to oversee the programming of the greens.
“We’ve been able to get young people and seniors and people with different ability levels to play these wonderful games,” Briand said proudly. “That’s what I love about these games. They are very inclusive sports.”
“I am very proud of the collaboration that got the greens restored and the sports back in the city,” Rapoza said. “The renovation would not have been possible without the Friends of Hazelwood Park and the many private donors and croquet and bowling enthusiasts that contributed to the effort. I look forward to seeing more folks come out at the free lessons to learn these fun sports. See you all on the greens!”
For more information, visit hazelwoodparkgreens@gmail.com or the New Bedford Parks and Recreation Dept. at info.prb@newbedford-ma.gov.
