Fra Noi Embrace Your Inner Italian
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.
“Then I did three years as the vice president and last year decided to run for president,” Pedersen says. “I thought if I was going to have a good shot at winning, I had to make an impact and meet many members.”
Pedersen, who was also the membership chairperson, started to organize new member nights on Fridays. “It was a great way to get them to the club and play on the courts,” she explains. She also involved the club in the yearly Catholic Charities of Lake County’s Celebration of Giving. And last summer, she worked with a group of three women to refresh and update the dining room
In November, she was elected to a two-year term as president of the 850-member club, becoming the first woman to do so.
“I was flattered and nervous at the same time,” Pedersen says. “It was an awesome thing and I still feel very privileged to be the leader of an organization that so many people know about and want to be members of.”
Established in 1969, the club is renowned for its world-class facilities and has hosted several national and international tournaments over the decades. In addition to regular league and open play and club tournaments, it hosts a variety of social activities for its members, including regular member dinners featuring entertainment, children’s language classes and holiday events.
Membership in the club is currently capped at 850, Pedersen says, with close to 150 people on a waiting list.
One reason for the cap is the capacity of the club, which is located at 440 Bank Lane in Highwood. It contains four indoor and two outdoor courts, a full kitchen, a banquet area that seats up to 120 and a bar with TV that airs Italian programming.
The club’s bathrooms and entryway were renovated last summer, according to Pedersen, and in July, the courts were resurfaced by Colleoni Bocce, a Milanese company that specializes in bocce court construction and renovation.
“I would put our courts against any others. We keep them very pristine,” Pedersen says. “With the recent resurface our courts are among the top in the nation.”
Among Pedersen’s goals as president is to add a year-round women’s league.
“Right now, we have a women’s league only in the summer and there are a lot of women who are falling in love with the sport,” Pedersen says. “We have three teams of women from the club going to a tournament in St. Louis.”
She also wants to expand the club’s junior membership.
“The juniors are the life of the sport, it’s good for the club to have a healthy junior population,” Pedersen says.
The club is open to use by members only and the facilities can only be rented to non-members with sponsorship by a member.
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