Inclusive Fun: Blake Bocce!

Bocce is a growing sport that has expanded at Blake High School and across MCPS.

If you’ve never heard of Bocce, you aren’t alone. It’s relatively unknown to most teens, and you don’t see coverage of Bocce on social media, much less ESPN. But Blake has its very own Bocce team that competes against other MCPS schools during the winter sports season.

Bocce is a popular Italian lawn game, where players toss large balls (bocce) to get them as close as possible to a smaller target ball, pallino, scoring points for closer balls in a round, with the first team to a set score winning the game. It’s played by teams (1, 2, or 4 players), and players alternate.  “Bocce is an inclusive sport at Blake, where everybody from any background can feel safe and have fun,” stated Ms. Costenbader, one of our team’s coaches this year. No tryouts needed to join Blake’s team.

Touching back to this sport being all inclusive, anybody can participate, thanks to our very kind coaches/counselors, Ms. Costenbader and Mr. Driver.  

The team had their first game on December 17, 2025, at 3:30, with the score being  2-0. 1^st set, the score was 5-4. The Bengals won in overtime. 2^nd set, the score was 6-3. When asked about the team’s first game, sophomore Jacqueline Valle Hernandez said, “I’m so proud of us. The game was really fun, actually. We won both rounds.” 

The games tend to last from an hour to 90 minutes. If you’re looking forward to joining next year, you can find Ms. Constenbader and Mr. Driver at the table outside the lunchroom, and they usually recommend bocce to students. What they do is ask if you were involved in a sport. Most people asked what bocce is, so he explains, and he demonstrates. After the requirements, Mr.Driver stated he was able to make a full team. These coaches also have previous history in coaching to from Ms. Costenbader being a basketball coach to Mr.Driver being a football coach, but both agreed this is a very low-maintenance sport compared to others. Now, if you’re not in it for the sports aspect and just want a sense of group contributing to the group’s need, you could receive SSL hours, well, everybody does, so no feeling left out, everybody is on the same level.