On Wednesday it was spitting rain and windy all afternoon, but only a few minutes after 6 p.m., it stopped. It was time to decide who the 2018 Sidney Bocce League Champions would be. For the third year in a row, the 2016 champions, Free Ballin, were in the finals. They would take on the sophomore team of Chewbocce in a best two out of three to 11 points.

In a strange scheduling twist, the top four teams all played on center court for the last regular season game of the year. Klingler and Company defeated Looney Tunes in a must win that took three games for them to make the playoffs. Meanwhile, Free Ballin needed three games to narrowly defeat Chewbocce.

Free Ballin, being the No. 1-ranked team, got to choose their first-round opponent. Instead of selecting the team with the worst record, they selected Looney Tunes. Why? Because this very good team had lost two of their last three games.

It almost backfired, because the Tunes were tuned up. They won the first game and were up 10 to 1 in the second when Free Ballin nibbled their way back, a point at a time, to win the second game, forcing a third game. This was a seesaw affair with FB taking the win to advance once again to the finals.

Meanwhile Chewbocce and Klingler and Company both had 6-3 records. Since they had never played each other, it was time for the bocce shootout to determine who would go first. This was a back and forth affair, as were their games, which took all three to determine the winner. Chewbocce advances.

We were treated to two weeks of amazingly close bocce. Now it’s time for the finals! In another weird twist, it was a rematch of Week 9. For some reason, both Klingler and Company and Free Ballin played well, but their opponents both played great. Each match only took two games, not the expected three. That’s how Season 6 finished with Chewbocce first, Free Ballin second, Looney Tunes third and Klingler and Company fourth.

A couple of interesting facts about the SBL. The youngest player this year was 10-year-old John Ratermann. The oldest was Jan Risk at 80. We have had six different teams win the championship, consisting of 25 people, 14 men and 11 women. The only living multiple time champions are Frank Catanzarite and Bob Spearman, with two each.