The Xavier College Preparatory community gathered Friday (May 22) evening to celebrate the career of Sr. Lynn Winsor, BVM, the vice principal of athletics and activities, and former longtime golf coach. She is retiring after 52 years with the all-girls Catholic school where she helped build a premier athletics program.
“You’re an amazing human being,” Bishop John Dolan said at the retirement celebration on the central Phoenix campus. “You’re absolutely loved by the people of God here, and I love you, too.”
A graduate of nearby St. Francis Xavier Elementary School, Wisconsin native Sr. Lynn went on to Xavier, graduating in 1961. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Arizona State University before joining the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, then earning her master’s degree from the University of Iowa. She coached and taught at a high school in St. Louis. But two years later, in 1974, the school closed, and after a call from fellow Sister of Charity, Sr. Joan Fitzgerald, BVM, the new Xavier principal at the time, Sr. Lynn headed west to work with her colleague.
“When I look back on my 52 years, I thank God for all of you,” Sr. Lynn said Friday. “… alumnae, parents, grandparents, faculty, staff, associates, vendors, even people who coached against me; athletic directors, the AIA and the AIAA [athletics associations]. I have made wonderful friends. It has been really great.”
Hired as a physical education teacher, Sr. Lynn also coached basketball, softball and golf, before becoming vice principal of athletics and activities in 1976.
“[Sr. Joan] was getting Xavier’s money’s worth,” Sr. Lynn quipped.
It was in golf and the expansion of girls sports at Xavier and throughout Arizona where Sr. Lynn’s greatest impact was felt, along with her devotion to developing young women of Catholic character.
During her career, the Xavier Gators won a record 40 Arizona scholastic championships, producing numerous individual title winners. From 1980 through 1995, the school won 16 consecutive titles. Over one 27-year period, Xavier did not lose a single regular season match.
Overall, Xavier athletic teams won 163 state championships and 73 runners-up honors while Sr. Lynn was there.
Named to the Arizona High School Athletic Coaches Hall of Fame in 1997, she became the National High School Athletic Coaches Association Coach of the Year in 1998.
Her other recognitions include inductions into the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) National High School Hall of Fame (2023) and the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA) Hall of Fame (2021). She was also honored as the USA Today Studio IX Trailblazer Award (2025), the Arizona Republic newspaper’s Most Influential Woman in Arizona Sports (2022) and the NFHS Title IX Woman Trailblazer of the Year (2021).
She was the first religious sister in history to receive these awards.
A culture rooted in faith
Xavier colleagues said her impact goes far beyond titles and awards.
“She built a culture rooted in faith, excellence, compassion and opportunity,” said Tui Selvaratnam, Xavier’s current golf coach and athletic director.
“Her leadership was never about recognition or attention; it was about service. It was about opening doors for others, and making sure young women had the same opportunities to dream boldly and compete proudly.”
An advocate for expanding girls’ sports, Sr. Lynn, along with colleagues at four other schools, began programs for girls soccer in 1985 and beach volleyball in 2010. She advocated before with her professional colleagues in both Arizona and the nation for wider girls’ athletic opportunities, recalling that her first national athletic directors conference in 1985 included “500 men and eight women.”
“Sr. Lynn saw athletics not as an extra activity but an important part of a young woman’s education,” said Xavier Principal Carol Ann Michaelson, a 1989 graduate. “She understood when students step onto a court, field, track or golf course, they learn lessons that stay with them forever.”
“Even students like me with absolutely no athletic promise whatsoever still felt encouraged, included and valued in her class. I could still picture her, full of energy and enthusiasm, managing to push us and make us laugh,” added Michaelson.
Leading, laughing
She also made her colleagues laugh, even when Xavier got bad news.
Sr. Joan recalled one year when Xavier was forced to relinquish its Arizona swimming championship because of a disqualified athlete. A state high school athletics representative would take back the trophy and deliver it to its new winner, Mountain View High School in Mesa, Ariz. Xavier would become the runner-up. But before that happened, Sr. Lynn removed the trophy plaque, taped a snippet of a Xavier athletics skirt to its back and reattached the plaque.
“Somewhere in Mountain View’s trophy case is a little piece of the Xavier uniform,” Sr. Joan said as laughter broke out across the room.
“We can have fun with what we’re doing and still take it seriously,” said current Xavier softball coach Sydnie Steffen.
A second-year coach whose teams have won back-to-back titles, Steffen was born over 20 years after Sr. Lynn began at Xavier.
“She’s shown me it’s really fun to be energetic,” Steffen said, “and that no amount of performance can make us any more or less loved by God.”
Others cited her impact.
“She helped me grow closer to my faith,” recalled Ashley Menne, a 2020 graduate and three-time Arizona individual and team golf champion who went on to become an All-American at Arizona State University and a member of the Epson Tour, the LPGA’s qualifying tour. “She’s giving, and always thinks about community. Even though our golf team had 16 girls, she [saw] every one and lifted up each person, seeing them as individuals.”
“On the team, we went to Masses and had prayer; we had a good [religious] structure,” Menne said.
“She worked diligently to ensure not only that our students would succeed,” said Bishop Dolan, “but that they would embrace [being] made in God’s image and likeness; they were created with that beauty of God.”
A source of her inspiration was Sr. Joan, her fellow sister and Xavier administrator. After hiring her, she told Sr. Lynn to form a healthy, friendly community culture.
“‘Let’s be friendly,’ LBF, she would say,” remembered Sr. Lynn. “She [also] said, ‘Make sports and activities a full part of our school, living up to our [Xavier] motto: Women of Faith, Pursuing Excellence.’”
Sr. Joan also told Sr. Lynn to “share her knowledge. Be part of positive change, especially in strengthening the athletic director position and advancing girls sports.”
Her younger colleague followed through.
“Her creativity, tenaciousness and professionalism created an exceptional Student Activities Program and Athletics Department,” Sr. Joan said. “She not only used these talents at Xavier, but within the Diocese of Phoenix, the state of Arizona and the nation at large. She left an indelible mark that will be with us forever.”
Sr. Lynn is retiring to the order’s mother house in Dubuque, Iowa, a city of nearly 60,000 on the western banks of the Mississippi River across from where the states of Wisconsin and Illinois meet.
“I will miss Phoenix so very much [although not the heat],” she said.
“We’re going to keep her spirit and her fun going,” smiled Xavier junior Maia Bleyl, a two-year golf team member. “Her light shines throughout this whole campus.”
