A partnership between Special Olympics Hong Kong and one of East Asia’s leading insurance companies is bringing bocce ball to Hong Kong schools using a revolutionary portable bocce court.

The recreational-sized Packabocce courts being used feature an easy-to-transport inflatable and compact 30-foot by 8-foot design. They made their first Hong Kong school appearance on 15 November when students with and without intellectual disabilities at Jockey Club Sarah Roe School took part in a unified bocce event. The school is attended by 70 students with special needs, aged from 5-19 years.

The bocce event was run by Special Olympics Hong Kong and supported by staff from the insurance company, which sponsors the Special Olympics Unified Schools and Athlete Leadership programmes. The event aimed to introduce bocce ball and the Special Olympics programme to children at the school.

It’s been a challenging year at Waikato Water Polo Club. Its main playing venue at Waterworld in Hamilton, New Zealand, closed for refurbishment work, forcing the club to find alternative deep and shallow water venues for its training.

The loss of its main venue cast doubt over the club’s 2018 season and had organisers and players questioning how they would be able to keep club and school competitions running. It also posed a challenge for its representative teams, which needed to keep training for upcoming major tournaments, including the biennial Pan Pacific Youth Water Polo Festival held in Auckland in July.

Club President Mark Harvey said the club searched for a new pool to run its training events but struggled to find a suitable venue that could store its existing three-metre-wide aluminium goals.

New Zealand’s highly successful blind lawn bowls mixed pair of David Stallard and Sue Curran were celebrated on Saturday night, alongside their directors Peter Blick and Ann Muir, at the 2018 Blind Sport New Zealand Sports Awards.

The group won the Packaworld Team of the Year Award in recognition of their dedication and strong performances at the Blind Lawn Bowls World Championships and 2018 Commonwealth Games.

The award, sponsored by Packaworld International, was one of eight awards presented during an awards dinner at the Grand Millennium Hotel in Auckland.

The courts were pumped, and so were the athletes. It was go-time at Yuen Chau Kok Sports Centre.

An inflatable bocce court that is making the sport more accessible around the world was introduced to Special Olympics athletes and coaches from Hong Kong during a special training day on Saturday.

Bocce is one of the fastest growing sports for Special Olympics athletes internationally, but its accessibility to people in many parts of Hong Kong is hampered by a lack of community sports facilities and competitions.

​The high-quality inflatable Packabocce courts produced by Packaworld International are highly portable, making them simple to transport to tournaments, schools and communities that wouldn’t otherwise be able to play bocce.

An inflatable football pitch made its New Zealand debut recently as part of a pioneering after school programme being run at Glenview School in Porirua.

The programme – known as the Homework Club – sees volunteers from the community and local businesses visit the decile 1 school twice a week to talk about their work and help out with activities such as reading, cooking, crafts and sport.

​​Last week’s Homework Club focused on sport and saw around 20 Glenview students don the footballing colours of Germany, Netherlands, Portugal and France for an afternoon of football fun.

The Great Britain men’s team continued its preparation for the IBSA European B Championships, which take place in Poland later this month, by competing in an exhibition match using world-first inflatable goalball goals and barriers.

The match, played between members of the Great Britain squad and emerging talent within the sport, took place at the English Institute of Sport in Sheffield. The event was a celebration of Goalball UK’s recent Investor in Customers Silver Award and was a platform to raise awareness of the Paralympic sport.

Goalball UK chief executive Mark Winder said the event had been a great success, demonstrating the sport to people from a wide range of backgrounds.

More action, more time on the ball, and more fun. That’s the difference a new fully-contained inflatable pitch is making for children taking part in the Grasshopper Soccer Redlands junior football programme in Queensland, Australia.

The programme is run by William Fraser, a former Queensland U18 national premier league assistant coach and Brisbane Roar community coach.

Mr Fraser has coached football for 20 years and now devotes his time to developing the next generation with a programme that focuses on improving children’s athleticism and motor skills using the beautiful game as a vehicle.

The ancient sport of bocce has undergone a resurgence in some parts of the world, helped in part by the invention of a new portable court that lets players take the game with them wherever they go.

Traditional bocce courts are made of wood or stone and can be 8-14 feet wide and 60-100 feet long. These are the kinds of courts that were used in town squares and courtyards during the days of the Ancient Roman empire.

They look good and work fine, but they are far from portable. They certainly can’t be packed up and taken to communities and locations crying out for new and accessible recreational opportunities.