Special Olympics bocce players in Ireland will have access to high-quality playing courts following the purchase of 26 portable Packabocce courts by their national body.

The new courts are a major investment in the sport’s future and will help Special Olympics Ireland introduce bocce to athletes in new venues and locations.

Special Olympics Ireland Sport Development Manager Elaine Twomey said the courts arrived in the country in October and had their first outing last week at a two-day area advancement event attended by more than 190 bocce athletes in County Kilkenny. 

The event was a success and played an important role in determining which athletes would be eligible to advance to the Leinster Regional Games next year and Ireland’s National Games in 2022, she said.

A bevy of bikini and speedo-clad water polo players joined the wildlife at Jervis Bay in Australia on the weekend for the first major Beach Water Polo Fours tournament of the summer season.

The event was held during the popular Sand and Sea Festival, with players competing on a portable water polo field supplied by Packaworld International. It saw mixed teams from New South Wales do battle in fast-paced day of four-a-side water polo action.

Beach Water Polo Fours spokesperson Emma Brown said the tournament went perfectly despite high winds in the area causing some of the other Sand and Sea Festival multisport events to be cancelled.

"The westerly wind was absolutely crazy, but Huskisson Beach where our tournament was held wasn’t affected at all."

England’s visually impaired rugby team has triumphed over Japan in the sport’s second ever international test series, hosted in Kumagaya on 14 October.

The three-match series was part of a festival of visually impaired rugby organised by UK charity The Change Foundation to coincide with the Rugby World Cup.

Packaworld’s high-quality inflatable Blind Rugby Packaposts were used throughout the series for player safety and to make setting up the smaller fields used for visually impaired rugby simple.

“I never thought I would be playing rugby with other visually impaired people, let alone playing in Japan during a Rugby World Cup,” said England team Captain Jack Pearce.

Hundreds of New Zealand school students will soon be playing handball as part of their PE classes, thanks to a NZ Handball Federation programme using portable goals from Packaworld International.

The initiative will see the goals supplied to selected schools in Auckland, Christchurch and Dunedin. It will expand on the current programme, which has been successfully running in Wellington.

NZ Handball Federation president Mike Roxburgh said the new goals were purchased with the help of a grant from One Foundation to help grow the sport.

He said the NZ Handball Federation was aiming to have 5,000 registered players within the next five years, but a lack of goals and equipment had limited that growth in the past.

South Australia’s goalball players are preparing to host the 2019 Australian Goalball Championships next month, with help from portable, inflatable goals from Packaworld.

The championships are being held in Adelaide from 3-6 October, and Goalball South Australia’s players are busy practising with their new Goalball Packagoals, which they received last month.

The state’s governing body for goalball, Goalball South Australia was established in 2012 in response to significant development of the sport through the work of the Australian Paralympic Committee and Blind Sports South Australia.

Goalball South Australia’s President David Tiller said the ease of transport, time required to set up and storability of the Packaworld goals is much better than steel or aluminium goals.

An organisation championing disabled sport in the Netherlands is expanding the number of bocce and goalball clinics it offers with the help of portable courts and goals from Packaworld International.

Gehandicaptensport Nederland is a national sports federation that runs competitions and introductory clinics for disabled people who want to play goalball, bocce, para ice hockey, wheelchair hockey, boccia, 5-a-side football and showdown. Bocce and goalball sessions have historically been challenging to run because traditional courts and goals are difficult to transport.

Gehandicaptensport Nederland sports coordinator Joris van Impelen said the portability of the inflatable Packabocce courts and Goalball Packagoals was allowing volunteers to expand the number of clinics being run at schools and sports clubs across the Netherlands.

An old quarry in the forests of Ohio is gaining cult status among water polo enthusiasts as the venue for one of North America’s most unusual outdoor festivals.

Known as The Quarry Scramble, the two-day tournament combines water polo, camping, cliff jumping and rafting on the former site of a free-loving hippy haven that sprung up after the Nelson Ledges Quarry near Garrettsville was abandoned.

This year’s festival, held on 3-4 August, was the Scramble’s fifth anniversary. It saw a record 230 water polo players travel from across the United States and Canada for what is becoming an annual pilgrimage.

Organisers Kacy Pugh and Kyle Ford said the tournament differed from other water polo events because teams are made up of people who don’t know each other beforehand.

Friday night. The wind is howling and a polar blast is forecast to hit the Sydney coast in the morning. You might think plunging into the waters off Botany Bay for a beach water polo tournament would be the last thing on anyone’s mind, but for Scott Nicholson and the rest of the Beach Water Polo Fours tournament organisers, the icy forecast just added to the thrill.

Played last Saturday, in the midst of the Australian winter, the inaugural Beach Water Polo Fours Winter Classic saw 40 keen participants don their booties and wetsuits for a day of fast-paced four-a-side beach water polo action.

Matches were played using inflatable water polo fields and goals from Packaworld, and hot tubs were brought in to help players stay warm during downtime.