Stanley Sackett drags a rake across a gravel road on Kalamazoo Valley Community College's Texas Township campus. He's the co-organizer of "Play Pétanque Monday Mornings!" and he's trying to even out the terrain ahead of the first game of the season. Co-leader Martha Beverly pulls up to unload equipment. They greet each other and then turn to the matter of the road.
"This is going to be unforgiving terrain," Stan says.
Martha agrees. "It’s going to be rough."
But it's not going to stop the group, which is just kicking off its fifth season. They formed through the Western Michigan University chapter of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. OLLI offers classes and activities for adults 50 and up.
![Close up view of a slightly faded bumper sticker that says "I [heart] Pétanque ...www.petanque-america.com"](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/eda3d8c/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6000x3695+0+143/resize/880x542!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F7a%2Ff2%2F642f8a094ccfa1b8fb4265458ff9%2F9-stan-bumpersticker.JPG)
According to Stan, pétanque is a game of finesse, rather than strength. The name refers to the fact that players keep their feet on the ground as they throw ("les pieds tanqués.") It’s related to the Italian game of bocce. But as Stan explains, "bocce is more of a bowling type of a game, where you roll it across the really finely smooth terrain, as opposed to, whatever it is, you play on it."
And while bocce is more of a bowling game, "this is more of a tossing game, so you’re trying to get some loft, so that when it lands it kind of has a limited amount of roll. But that all depends on the terrain."
The balls, or boules, are metal and hollow, about the size of a baseball. Their weight varies. It’s typically more than a pound, but less than two.
"We’ve played with people who’ve played a lot of golf," Stan notes, "and they’re really good at reading the terrain."
I planned to be a journalistic fly on the wall during the game. But I soon find myself assigned to Stan’s team. Martha leads the other one. Stan throws the first boule. It lands close to the cochonnet, or 'small pig' — the small target ball.
As the game goes on, the rocks inspire strategies. Stan throws high to avoid hitting some of the bigger gravel. Other times, he wields a measuring tape as the players figure out exactly whose boules are closest to the target.
There are six of us playing, including regulars Ann and Shirley, who preferred to stick with their first names for this story, and my fellow newbie, Nicky Leigh. My throws are a mixed bag. Nicky does well, though she’s modest about it.
"I think most of my shots prove it. It’s just the occasional luck," she maintains after one particularly good throw.
Martha notes that when the boules fall a certain way, Stan becomes a “shooter.”
"That means he’s aggressive and trying to move things, not just put it close if there’s a ball already close. So murder is in his eyes. He’s not a pointer, he’s a shooter now," she says.
Martha’s even doing some birding on the side, keeping the "Merlin" app from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology open on her phone as it registers "doves, song sparrows and red-winged blackbirds" among others.
The game is close for a while, but Stan’s team prevails and even gets a few extra points at the end.
Nicky says she hadn’t been sure what to expect.
"I didn’t know what the game was, except that it basically looked like it’s a form of bocce. And I never played bocce, but I grew up in New York City, and in the parks some of the old Italian guys would be playing bocce. So it just looked like a variation of that."
She says she enjoyed the game and she’ll be back.
Shirley, who’s been playing for a few years, says they play into the fall when the boules start to get too cold.
"You put them in your hands to warm them up and your hands get cold," she says.
"We usually have a bigger crowd," she adds.
"Yeah, we’ve got room for more," Ann says.
And Stan has hopes for getting the terrain back in shape. He makes a few more passes with the rake as Martha packs up.
