This nun and women's sports advocate led Xavier to 40 state girls golf titles. Now she's retiring

LAUREN GILGER: Sister Lynn Winsor, a legend in Arizona sports and a longtime Title IX advocate, is retiring. It's hard to believe for the so called "Energizer Nunny," an Arizona Sports Hall of Fame inductee who has led Phoenix's Xavier College Prep to a national-record 40 state girls golf titles.

Sister Lynn has been at Xavier for 52 years. She came to the all-girls Catholic high school in 1974, and since then the school has won 163 state titles. She cofounded the Arizona Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association and has been a tireless advocate for girls sports and Title IX since before it was a given that they would be able to play.

She's also a Xavier alum herself. She graduated in 1961 and played everything she could back then, too.

SISTER LYNN WINSOR: We played nine-person volleyball. Remember, you had three, three and three. And then there was basketball. It was very interesting. You would have three on one side and two on the other side. I mean, these are the old days of sports.

GILGER: This was of course, before Title IX, before girls really played sports, but they made it work.

WINSOR: We didn't have leagues, but we used to call up like St. Mary's and then there was a St. Joseph's in Tucson and a St. Joseph's in Prescott and we used to play them. It was like a little Catholic league.

GILGER: This is like a makeshift girls league.

WINSOR: It was. But Xavier was a pioneer in that way back when, you know, started in 1943. And the sisters always believed in athletics and sports and activities and they really pushed us to be in it. I actually played volleyball, basketball and softball. Softball was probably my best. I was a catcher, and I just remember I was playing one game and the catcher's mask broke and my two front teeth got wrecked in the back. My mother wasn't too pleased.

GILGER: Sister Lynn announced her retirement last month and is headed to Dubuque, Iowa, where her order of nuns, the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, have a mother house now.

In full disclosure, I am a Xavier alum and a Xavier soccer alum, though I only ever made it to JV. But I have plenty of memories of Sister Lynn in her Xavier polo shirt on the morning announcements, making jokes and revving everyone up at pep rallies in the gym. She was always on the sidelines of big games and often at practice just for fun.

As many have said since she announced her retirement, it's hard to imagine Xavier without her. Sister Lynn moved here to Phoenix in 1954 when her mother took a job as the director of Temporary Child Services here. They bought a house on Pasadena Avenue in central Phoenix, just north of Camelback Road.

And she and her little brother walked to school at St. Francis Xavier and swam in the canals which used to be lined with cottonwood trees. She remembers a lot about Phoenix back then, and I asked her all about it when I sat down with her in her office recently.

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WINSOR: We lived at 510 E. Pasadena and where Uptown Plaza is now. It was a big giant lot. There was nothing there. And a fruit truck and a vegetable truck would come in on the weekends and you could buy fruits and vegetables there. So it was really fun to go over there. You know, the grocery was there. Piggly Wiggly. Think of those names.

And then it turned to El Rancho and then there was Margraf's Pharmacy. I mean, it was just great. And it was just a few blocks, so we used to go there. And then there was a place called Navarre. It was a very ritzy restaurant. Oh, yes, it was quite classy.

I think we went there once. And then there was a Helsing's coffee shop. And that turned into the Lunt Avenue Marble Club, which turned into Applebee's, which turned into the Henry. So I've seen boom, boom, boom, boom.

GILGER: All at that corner of Central and Camelback right there.

WINSOR: It was a smaller city. I remember they used to have the rodeo parade going down Central. It was just, it's just a lot different, a lot more people. What I do notice is that the traffic is a little more intense. I would say that's one thing I've noticed a big change.

I remember we had, past the neighborhood, people had horses. ... You get over on by 24th Street. I mean, there was horse corrals. It was just a different type of city. Camelback was like the end. And then it got to Bethany Home and maybe Northern. And after that, not much.

GILGER: So memories of old Phoenix. And I just wonder, like you say Phoenix has changed, which clearly it has, but like so much, right? Like, I mean, we're talking about exponential growth since the time you were a kid here. What's it been like? Do you look around sometimes and just wonder, how did this happen?

WINSOR: Well, it's interesting. We play schools in Gilbert and we play schools in Peoria or Surprise. They never come downtown. Have they ever been to the state Capitol? A lot of them haven't. You know, so I think that, that, that that part of it's been lost. I think that the history of Arizona has maybe been kind of lost because people don't know these things.

GILGER: OK, so let's talk about sports. Let's talk about your role in women's sports in particular. You talked about growing up here, being at Xavier, kind of having these makeshift leagues of women. But this was before, you know, women's sports was required to exist in any kind of real way, before Title IX happened.

When you came back to work at Xavier in the '70s, it was right after Title IX had passed. And it took, it sounds like a long time to get it going, to get these programs up to par. What were the challenges like?

WINSOR: I came in '74, and I taught PE and coach three sports. And it was interesting. About 1980, it was '80. Zig Kwiatkowski, the athletic director over at Cactus High School, he said, "Sister, I really like to get an Arizona AEDs association going." And that's really when I started learning about sports in Arizona, the AIA, all the things that were out there, the things we had and the things we didn't have.

We all knew Title IX was out there, but very few people really tried to implement what it could do. I worked with nine executive directors of the AIA, and I just remember one story in 1985, boys had soccer, girls had nothing. We were saying, why can't girls have soccer? So four of us got together. It was myself, Orme Ranch, Phoenix Country Day and another school. And we said, let's start our own little league. Pay for it ourselves. Just do it.

I used to play on the old Brophy football field. We got it going two years after that. Well, how come Xavier has it? How come these girls are playing soccer and our girls are not? And look at it today.

GILGER: It's hard for anyone from my generation, right, to believe or to even imagine the fact that, like, girls wouldn't have had a sport to play on the same level as boys. Like, it seems such a given now. It wasn't for these kids. It wasn't for you.

WINSOR: Everybody supported the boys. Remember, everybody would show up at the boys basketball and the football games and all that kind of thing. And many people started saying, how come this is not happening for girls? So we, as a group of us and there was a group of women. When I first went to my first AIAAA conference, there was, like, nine female athletic directors in the whole state. Maybe not even nine.

At the national one, when I went in '85, there was, like, 25 women. And, you know, we bonded together. We got together and said, how can we implement this? And one of my advantages is I'm a sister, I'm a nun. And I think sometimes that opens the door for me more than other women. I was always probably treated with a little more respect than the other women got.

I just remember one time on the national level, I was in a meeting when I was the president-elect, and the executive director was very rude and obnoxious to me. And I walked out of the room with the past president, and I said, if that ever happens again, I will never, ever stay as president of this organization. I said, you can't treat people like that. Two minutes later, everything changed.

I mean, you just had to stick up. And I very rarely spoke up that, that intensely, but sometimes you had to do that.

GILGER: Did it make you mad at the time that girls didn't have equity in this? That you were treated poorly sometimes for being a woman in this arena?

WINSOR: You know, I never got mad. I got more like, we gotta change it. You know, getting mad doesn't do anything. You've gotta go in responsibly, have your reasons, have your dialogue with people, and then they will understand and go for it. But getting mad and yelling and screaming is not the way to get anything done.

If you keep at it and you keep at it, but you do it in a graceful, friendly, kind manner with your reasons, ready to go to defend your position, usually things happen.

GILGER: Let me ask you lastly, Sister Lynn, a couple of questions. Just about this, this retirement, about deciding to step back, deciding to leave Phoenix, deciding to leave Xavier. All of these things, which I'm sure are bittersweet in some ways. I mean, how do you wrap your head around slowing down when you're, you know, the Energizer Nunny?

WINSOR: That's what they call it. Sista is my nickname. And they call me the Energizer Nunny. I look back at these, these 52 years, and the people here have been so welcoming to me. The parents, the students, our alumnae, our faculty, our staff. I just feel at home here. But sometimes in your heart and in your mind, you know, hey, it's time.

I know my health hasn't been that great, and, you know, to be an athletic director, you gotta be everywhere. It's that kind of a job. And it came to me that the good Lord said, you know, it's time to retire. And I'm gonna miss the people. I'm gonna miss, I miss you. I'm gonna miss the radio stations, the TV people. I miss everybody. I know everybody here. I've been here longer than most of them.

But you know what? You know, it's time. And the good Lord will take care of me. I believe that.

GILGER: So I know you said you're happy with the team that you're leaving here in charge of athletics and activities at Xavier. You feel like you're leaving it in good hands. But I wonder also about the school's future, about the order's future.

You've a sister, and you've been a nun for a long time, but fewer and fewer women are taking that path, and there are fewer and fewer nuns here at Xavier and in lots of institutions like that around the country. Are you worried about that?

WINSOR: Well, first of all, I think about the sisters. We have one or two entering every once in a while. I mean, it's not like we're completely dying out, but we have associates, which are laypeople who have become affiliated with our community, and they really are doing a tremendous job. I think we have about 250 of them now, and they're all over the country.

The sisters will always be here until the last sister passes away. We have four sisters here next year, which is really very unusual. They don't have them very many places, and I think Xavier has such a tradition. They'll continue these traditions on. I have no, no fear about that.

GILGER: What do you want your legacy to be here in this community, in this school, in this city?

WINSOR: I don't want to be remembered as the golf coach or the whatever coach or the AD. I just want to be remembered as a person that really cared about other people and really live that in action. I was joyful, hopeful, and I really do believe that. I think that that's hopefully I'll be remembered.