When Mary Ann Pedersen first joined the Highwood Bocce Club, she had no aspirations to be in leadership. “I wasn’t thinking in that direction,” Pedersen says. It was just before the COVID-19 pandemic and she was one of several women who took part in Sunday Funday, an informal, non-competitive experience for women who wanted to learn how to play bocce. Pedersen and her husband had joined in part because they had the time now that their kids were away at college.
“I’m 100 percent Italian and an Italian speaker and I figured it could be a way to practice my conversational Italian, too,” Pedersen says. Soon after joining, however, Pedersen was encouraged by one of the women who coordinated Sunday Funday to run for board secretary. And shortly after she was elected, she was appointed an interim trustee to fill a vacancy that had opened up.
