Welcome Back to the Beach!

Dear Bocce Family,

We’re baaaaaaaack.

After a little time away, the Vigilucci’s Beach Bocce World Championship is officially returning to Del Mar—right where we belong: on the sand, by the ocean, with bocce balls flying, questionable strategies being debated, and a few people taking a beach game far more seriously than they probably should.

We’re incredibly excited to bring this tournament home and to welcome back so many of the people who have made it what it is over the years. But this year will also be different.

For the first time, we come back without one of our favorite people.

Pat Maldi was a huge part of this tournament, this community, and our lives. Her absence will absolutely be felt on the beach this year. So while we’ll still compete, laugh, argue over measurements, and celebrate accordingly, we’ll also be playing for something bigger.

This year, we play for purpose. We play for Pat.

We hope the day is filled with exactly the kind of fun, friendship, and good-natured competition she would have wanted—and that somewhere along the way, we raise a glass, tell a few Pat stories, and remember just how lucky we were to have her as part of all of this.

Now, for the slightly less sentimental portion of this letter…

Please behave yourselves.

Getting the Beach Bocce World Championship back to Del Mar is something we are extremely grateful for, and we would very much like to be invited back again next year. And the year after that. And the year after that.

So please respect the beach, respect the rules, respect the people around you, clean up after yourselves, and remember that while we may consider this our beach for the day, the City of Del Mar may have a slightly different interpretation.

Have fun. Compete hard. Be gracious. And when in doubt, don’t be the reason we aren’t welcomed back.

We’ve waited a long time to say this again:

Welcome back to Del Mar.
Welcome back to Vigilucci’s Beach Bocce World Championship.

We’re grateful you’re here, and we can’t wait to see you on the sand.

Play for fun. Play for purpose. Play for Pat.

See you on the beach,

John Manson
Vigilucci’s Beach Bocce World Championship Co-Founder