MILTON, Del. - Two neighbors in Milton teamed up to help their friend, Jay Young, get back on the bocce ball court. Jay has been confined to a wheelchair since 2019.
An amazing act of friendship is giving Jay another shot at fun.
At Meadows of Beaver Creek, neighbors gather on a court to play bocce ball. The court has a very special name in honor of one special man: the Jay Young Bocce Court.
Jay Young is getting back in the game with the help of the tight knit community and a bocce bazooka, which is powered by his wheelchair.
"One day we said I really have an idea to let Jay play bocce with us, so we combined our efforts,” said Joe Levash, creator of the bocce bazooka, along with Tom Souder the designer of the contraption.
Jay was unable to play bocce ball for a year and a half, after he was diagnosed with a tumor on his spinal cord in 2019.
"I walked into the operation and haven't been able to walk since,” said Jay Young, commissioner of the Bocce Ball Club.
So Tom and Joe got to work. "Similar to a potato gun, powered by air, it's safe, it mounts to his chair easily, and most importantly gives Jay an opportunity to control where the ball goes, by adjusting the air pressure, the angle and the lateral movement … and when he's ready he hits it,” said Levash.
When he was healthy, Jay started the game of bocce in an empty lot, which has now expanded into a new court and a bocce ball club.
"The people in here are fantastic, obviously they didn't need to do this but they chose to do it so I could participate,” said Young.
As the man who started it all, his friends felt Jay deserved to play.
"Jay is a stellar human being and I'd give him a kidney. We have a group of guys here that are second to none,” said Levash.
With the bazooka, the ball can travel up to 15 mph, reaching the end of the 70 foot court.
"We play hard and we don't give him any favoritism, we play to win,” said Levash.
“And he plays to win too!" said Souder.
The honorary bocce ball commissioner is getting another shot at the game.
"It'll take a while to figure out how to make it work well, but the way these guys throw, they're not very good either, so I’m in pretty good shape with this,” said Young.
This is the 4th prototype of the bocce bazooka and it is expected to work for years to come.