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.

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.

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.

Children at six New Zealand schools have been side-stepping, tackling, kicking and dribbling their way to fitness with a little help from Packaworld International.

The Wellington-based company provided a set of hybrid football/rugby goals to Wellsford School, Pukeoware School, Turaki Primary School, Grants Braes School, Leeston Consolidated School and Rakaia School after they won a competition on Packaworld’s Facebook page.

The competition called on principals, teachers and send in inspiring nominations for their local schools, outlining why they deserved to win and how the goals would be used.

Pukeoware School in Waiuku received an impressive 15 nominations, more than any other school.

When it comes to what makes bocce special, there are few people better qualified to comment than Special Olympics Bocce Sports Resource Team chairman Mike Ryan.

Known to some as "Mr Bocce", the hardworking New Zealander has been involved in the sport for 25 years.

There’s no doubting his passion either – his car number plate is BOCCE and he has "bocce" tattooed on him in Greek, Arabic, Chinese and English – one for each of the Special Olympics World Games he’s attended as either a bocce coach or technical advisor.

We caught up with Mike to ask his views on what makes bocce so popular in the Special Olympics, and what it might take for it to achieve world domination.

New inflatable goalball goals are helping a Canadian sport organisation introduce sport and physical activity to aspiring blind and low vision participants, as well as supporting its high-performance goalball athletes.

The Alberta Sports and Recreation Association for the Blind (ASRAB) has recently received two portable Goalball Packagoals from New Zealand company Packaworld International. The unique goals are the same size as conventional nine-metre-wide metal goalball goals but are inflatable, making them easy to transport and store.

ASRAB Executive Director Linda MacPhail said the new goals would play an important part in helping the Association to take its sport and recreation programmes to people with vision impairments in more towns and cities across Alberta.

Portable courts making bocce ball more accessible around the world were used last week to host the next generation of bocce ball stars at the Special Olympics Ontario Invitational Youth Games in Canada.

More than 2,000 student athletes from around the world descended on Toronto for the four-day event, which ran from 14-17 May.

The bocce ball competition was held at the University of Toronto’s St George Campus, where more than 240 young athletes competed for gold on 10 inflatable Packabocce courts.

The innovative courts feature a lightweight but durable design that makes them easier to transport, set up and store than bocce ball courts made out of wood or PVC piping.