Playing Pètanque in Ohio

Pètanque Court in Zanesfield, Ohio

I've been dealing all week with a nasty cold I picked up by being outside for two hours in the brisk air last Sunday in Zanesfield, Ohio. It's worth it, though, because after a break of more than four months, I was playing pètanque again. Readers of Sundays in Spain, my earlier blog, know that I used to spend a lot of time playing petanca, as it is known in Spanish, when living in the Alicante region in southeast Spain. It doesn't take a lot of resources to play this game: the court can be just a field or sandy area, the game is centered around one ping-pong sized ball, and each player needs three metal balls. No special equipment, though a sun visor helps.

We had looked high and low for other players of pètanque in the Cincinnati area, checking out parks and sports stores, and searching for notices in the newspaper and on the Internet. Finally we came across the Zanesfield Pètanque Club. So last Sunday we made a two-hour trip north from Cincinnati to Zanesfield, a small town that I had not heard of, even though, I discovered during the course of the drive, it is located only a half hour's drive from the town in which I grew up! The Zanesfield club is very active and enthusiastic about the sport, and has corralled support from many organizations in the community to set up the best-equipped pètanque courts I have ever seen.  The members were welcoming and we had a great time, even though I lost two games. And caught a cold.