National Champ

By STEVE GALLUZZO | Sports Editor

The second time was the charm for Memo Macalpin, whose stellar rolling and inspiring words helped the Highwood B Bombers win the Open B gold medal at the 2023 United States Bocce Federation National Championships held June 19-24 in a tiny North Shore suburb of Chicago.

Having gotten his first taste of national competition at the same tournament one year earlier at Methuen Sons of Italy Lodge just outside of Boston, when his Red Crush team took fifth in the same division, the 49-year-old Santa Monica resident was proud to represent the Palisades Bocce Club again and give founder Jimmy Dunne his first national championship.

Known for his gold shoes, Macalpin brought more than glamour to the dance this time around. He also brought a superior attitude, a lucky practice jersey and a new hairdo.

“For this year’s tournament I added psychology and a mohawk to my reportoire,” Macalpin joked. “My team from last year wasn’t available and the host team needed a fourth player, so I joined them, we won and they got put into the Bocce Hall of Fame. All of us really bonded. I went from the guy with gold shoes to a gold medal!”

The turning point was a narrow 12-11 loss in the second round of pool play to an all-ladies team called National Treasures.

“In retrospect I’m glad we lost because we relaxed after losing to them,” Macalpin recalled. “We won our other four pool play matches to finish round robin in a three-way tie. We got seeded No. 1 in the playoffs and bulldozed through it, beating Roma Lodge and Better Late Than Never from the other pool in the semifinals and finals.”

Macalpin was a welcome addition to the host Highwood Bocce Club squad, captained by Mike Ronzio.Showing his hometown pride, Macalpin wore his dark blue Legends shirt replete with a BB Legends (the team he plays for in the Sunset League at Veterans Gardens) patch on the right sleeve, a Red Sox “B” signifying the site of last year’s nationals in Boston and a Cubs “C” representing the site for this year’s nationals in Chicago. Before leaving for the nationals he donated several sets of colorful Super Martels (engineered from scratch in a little town in Italy) to the Palisades Bocce Club, much to Dunne’s delight. They are considered the highest quality bocce balls in the world.

“It was so crazy… after winning the national championship with my team, I celebrated briefly and then rushed off to the airport and barely made my flight to Iceland, then Paris, then Nice, then Cannes for work,” Macalpin said. “The day before I flew back I did a day trip to Monaco to try and relax since I’d been going 100 miles per hour the whole month it felt like. It started to hit me a week later. Me and my team won a bocce national championship!

I’m so proud to deliver some hardware to the Palisades! In addition to the BB Legends, I also play on The Martinis in the Senior League, which is fitting since I won the Martini Award in the spring of 2022.”

The Martini Award is presented each season to an extraordinary Palisadian filled with passion, talent, a giving heart and a will to make a difference in the community. It is named in honor of one of the Palisades’ best and most beloved bocce players Mike Martini, who passed away in October at the age of 97.

Macalpin has been a Palisades Bocce Club player since it began in the spring of 2021 and having now played at various other venues against some of the finest players around he believes his local league stacks up against any out there.

“For one thing nationals are held indoors whereas our courts are outdoors with so many more variables,” he said. “It’s an advantage playing in the elements where wind and the temperature factor in.”

Macalpin is pushing to have the nationals played at Campo di Bocce in Los Gatos (southwest of San Jose) in the future to give it a West Coast flavor. He also wants to field a Palisades team next year. A former pro wrestler and the founder of the celebrity and creator relations firm KYZEL, Macalpin wants to make bocce his full-time job.

“My goal is to go to the Pan Am Games, World Games and hopefully one day the Olympics,” he said. “Of course, I want to win a Pali League championship, which I’ve yet to do.

The level of play here is amazing. We’ve had 850 participants the last two years and we have 440 players in our summer leagues right now.”