Every year people come together to celebrate National Boccia Day on 27^th September. After holding virtual events last year, it was so exciting to be able to celebrate that Boccia is Back this year by supporting clubs, schools, and organisations across all four countries of the UK to host 72 in-person National Boccia Day activity sessions!

The celebrations were taken UK-wide for the first time this year, as we worked with Scottish Disability Sport, Disability Sport Wales, and Disability Sport Northern Ireland to grow the reach of National Boccia Day. From the Orkney Isles to Plymouth, via County Antrim, Pembrokeshire and Norwich, boccia activity could be found in all corners of the home countries!

     

Boccia England CEO, Chris Ratcliffe, said:

“After the success of the Paralympics GB Boccia Team in Tokyo, this year’s National Boccia Day has provided a fantastic opportunity to celebrate those involved in all aspects of the sport. It has been wonderful to grow the event through working with Scottish Disability Sport, Disability Sport Northern Ireland, and Disability Sport Wales and celebrate together that Boccia is Back. Thank you to everyone who has delivered a National Boccia Day session, we hope that you have enjoyed this year’s event as much as we have.”

  

It has been fantastic to see Paralympians getting into the spirit of National Boccia Day too! David Smith says that success at an elite level is being mirrored by the growth of the sport at the grassroots:

“Boccia is a sport with so much potential in the UK because it can be played by anybody. We’re in a brilliant position now, thanks to the live coverage from Tokyo, to get more people involved. Playing a sport like boccia helps more parts of society - that are often forgotten - to have an active role and to have an opportunity to achieve something. And as the sport grows at a club level, it means that the Great Britain squad has more strength and depth and we’d have more domestic competitions that would be spectator-friendly.”

Over the last week we have been using our social media to showcase how different elements of boccia are starting to move back from the virtual to the physical, and we ran a series of National Boccia Day competitions to win exclusive #NBD21 mugs and T-shirts. National Boccia Day has helped us to reach new audiences with the power of our amazing sport – a phenomenal 21,000 people have been reached by our Facebook posts this week, so thank you to everyone who has shared!

A big thanks go to Irwin Mitchell, who have sponsored National Boccia Day 2021, making it possible for us to send out the activity packs and competition prizes.

If you’ve been inspired to give boccia a go, take a look at our club finder to see what’s going on in your area.