You don’t have to live in a college town to know which team you love to hate…

The Ballestra festivities have continued through this week and I’ve made it to a few performances. And yes, I promise to stop talking about this at some point. But when your entire town is wrapped up in a centuries-old rivalry and makes this much fuss about it, it’s hard not to notice.
For those of you who have no clue what I’m talking about, here’s a little synopsis. I don’t know much about the history of the Ballestra, mostly because the books written on it are in Italian. But I’ll tell you what I know. The main event is a crossbow-tournament-contest-shootout-whatshamacallit between Gubbio and Sansepolcro. It occurs twice a year, and is hosted by Sansepolcro in the fall and Gubbio in the spring. Now, I don’t know how much hoop-la goes on over in our rival town, but here the tension is comparable to Duke-Carolina basketball game meets Renaissance Faire. Before the main event, there is a major parade, demonstrations of traditional arts and crafts, a scrimmage, and a Shakespeare play.
On Wednesday, the crossbowmen here had a shootout against each other to see who qualified to shoot on Sunday. Of course, to make it more interesting, two sides of the town compete against each other so everybody can enjoy the satisfaction of shouting insults at someone other than their next door neighbors. There are four main gates in the city walls, and the two most important are the Porta Romana (which leads to Rome) and the Porta Fiorentina (which leads to Florence). I’m an all-out Porta Fiorentina girl, in case anybody wants to know. Each man gets a single shot, and the teams alternate who shoots first. Their accuracy was astounding…target had to be at least thirty yards away, and no one was more than three inches off. Which is a very good thing, because somebody would get sued over the lack of safety precautions if this took place in the US. The stands (lists is probably more accurate) line the range, and many spectators couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the target.
It’s really funny how much the contest was like any other modern sport. There was a marching band, referees, and cheerleaders. Never mind that the band wore livery (and some serious boots), the referees were dressed in capes instead of stripes and carried battleaxes instead of whistles, and the cheerleaders outfitted with trailing brocades. Is nothing new under the sun? They even had even trash-talk. Two heralds went up to the microphone and started—in slightly modernized plainchant, mind you—to insult the other side and to let them know just how impossible it would be to beat his own. Translation was entirely unnecessary.
The similarities don’t stop there. When a crossbowman prepares to shoot, the opposing crowd starts hollering the Italian equivalent of “Hey batter batterbdbdbdbd” and tries to make as much noise as possible. After each side has had a shot, the referee takes down the target and adjudicates the winner. Another herald marches out, waves his sword around a bit to draw out the suspense, then points it at the winning side. He might as well have signaled “touchdown!” Porta Fiorentina won 6-5 on a tiebreaker!!! Do we rock at archaic crossbow skills or what???