When the senior citizens' advisory board invited Herrsching to play boccia for the first time two years ago, there were four of them. Then came six – and there were more and more. When the weather was nice on Friday, 23 "happy players" met on the old sports field.
Herrsching – When playing boccia, the teammates don't just throw balls. For Mia Schmidt, who herself was a trainer at TSV Herrsching for 52 years, there is much more to it. "It's sport," she says of the regular meetings in Herrsching. You bend down, you move – for older people, this is not always a matter of course, but it is important. "And we have a lot of fun doing it," she says. The fun starts with the division of the groups – there are three on Friday, each with seven to eight players. Half of the balls marked red and half are marked green and half are a "fat pig". The "sow" is a smaller wooden ball that is first thrown onto the marked fairway. Whoever places his ball closest to the "pig" wins or gets one point.
Maike Hollander wears gloves. Not because it's too cold. She just tries it "because I never score. So I thought I'd give it a try with gloves." Old driver's gloves, 50 years old. "Back then, you wore something like that." Otto Schmidt, Burkhard Siewert and Traude Prenzel have taken on the role of referees and enter the result of the match on a list. Although nothing is at stake, the ambition is awakened in the participants between 60 and 88 years old. And sometimes a tape measure is needed to see which ball is actually closer to the "sow".
Mia Schmidt stands on the sidelines and just watches on Friday. "I'm the jumper," she says and is happy about the many participants and scolds friendly when someone bowls. "You throw out from below, with your hand over the ball. Like a drop falling off the tap," she explains. However, many people have the ball in their hands, just like bowling, and sometimes give it a spin when throwing. Since bowling takes place in winter instead of boccia, Mia Schmidt turns a blind eye. She probably won't get rid of it, especially the ladies: "Then let them skittle." She looks admiringly over at Gerhard Kiesling. "His eyesight is very bad," she says. "He can hardly see the 'sow' and yet he aims so well. Fantastic," she says appreciatively. It's a pleasure to have someone like Kiesling on the team.
Because the meetings are open, new players are always joining in and everyone had a lot of fun together, Mia Schmidt had tried to network boccia even better through a convivial tournament - around the Ammersee. The funding, she says, was even secured through Leader. She wrote to all the groups she knew of, "but none of them got back to me". She regrets this very much. It was an opportunity to get to know each other, to connect the region.
She would also like to build bridges in other respects. The Senior Citizens' Advisory Board expressly invites fellow citizens aged 55 and over to its events. "We want to have the successors with us. After all, we don't just want to cultivate deficits. We want to get away from that, absolutely." That's why she emphasizes that younger people are welcome, whether at the "boccia for happy players" or from the end of October to April at bowling.
"Stop, stop, stop, leave the red one," is a cry from Otto Schmidt's group. Several balls are close to the "sow", which is slightly larger than usual, in order to see it better in the grass. That's when the measuring tape has to be restored.
After an hour, the balls are put back together and the fairways are dismantled. And because it's so beautiful, it's a good opportunity to end the evening in the beer garden. If you would like to attend the boccia of the Senior Citizens' Advisory Board on the Old Sports Field next time: The game is played every Friday from 17 p.m., even if the sun is not shining. "There have been six of us standing in the rain here," says Mia Schmidt.