Dr. Mary Jo Wynn was an athlete and educator from Hartville, Missouri. Frustrated by the lack of organized girls’ sports in her youth, Wynn devoted her life to creating new opportunities in higher education by working to establish competitive college sports teams for women.

Mary Jo Wynn was born on December 24, 1931, in Hartville, Missouri, to William Thomas Winn and Tina Russell. The Wynns ran a general store. Active from an early age, Mary Jo developed an interest in sports while watching her older brothers, Russell and Tom, participate in athletics. Opportunities for girls, however, were more limited. During her time at Hartville High School, she played volleyball, basketball, and softball, but with no seasons or leagues and little support from area schools, she rarely was able to play for an organized team. Nevertheless, she found that the experience of competing in sports helped to build her self-confidence.

After graduating from Hartville High School in 1949, Wynn enrolled at Southwest Missouri State College (now Missouri State University) in Springfield. She started as a business major, but her interest in athletics led her to switch to physical education. Wynn found that women’s athletics at Southwest Missouri State College were limited to intramural, or recreational, competition. Wanting more, she found other women who were interested in competitive sports and played on organized teams outside of the college, including singles and doubles tennis for the Springfield public parks board, softball with the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) Y-Ettes, and Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) basketball with a team sponsored by the Wilcox Propane Company.

Seeking greater athletic opportunities for women on campus, Wynn also took on leadership roles within several student organizations, such as the Bruin Boosters, Women’s Physical Education Majors Club, and the Women’s Athletic Association. Through these groups, she helped to organize “Play Days” or “Sports Days,” in which students from area colleges and high schools participated in a series of competitive games. These early competitions paved the way later for organized sports programs for women.

In 1953, Wynn graduated from Southwest Missouri State College with a bachelor’s degree in education. She taught physical education at Lakeside Junior High School in Pittsburg, Kansas, for two years, then went to the University of Northern Colorado as a graduate student, earning a master’s degree in physical education in 1956. She returned to Southwest Missouri State College a year later after teaching courses in physical education at the University of Corpus Christi in Texas.

Back on campus in Springfield, Wynn taught physical education and slowly organized some of the college’s first women’s athletic teams. This was no easy task, as the college dragged its feet in supporting these new programs. In many cases, the players had to provide their own uniforms and the coaches drove teams to and from games in their own vehicles. Additionally, with no athletic scholarships for women, Wynn had to recruit student athletes from within the physical education classes. At the end of the 1960s, Southwest Missouri State College had nine women’s teams, with Wynn at first coaching the tennis, volleyball, swimming, and track teams herself.

By the 1970s , Wynn had brought winning teams, including the 1974 national champion softball team, to the newly renamed Southwest Missouri State University. She also helped guide the university after Title IX, a landmark civil rights law, was passed in 1972. Title IX required any school receiving government funding to provide women with educational opportunities equal to men, including in competitive sports. As a result, many colleges and universities created more women’s teams and provided more funding for them.

At about this time, Wynn earned a PhD from the University of Oregon and was promoted to director of women’s athletics at Southwest Missouri State University. In this role, she not only made sure the university followed Title IX but also led its women’s teams into the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) after it replaced an earlier organization, the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW), in the early 1980s. The NCAA previously had governed only men’s athletics. Wynn, who was involved in the AIAW, at first was against the move to the NCAA because she feared that women’s athletics would lose the independence they had enjoyed in the AIAW, but the conflict between the two organizations ended when the AIAW shut down in 1983.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Wynn continued her efforts to promote and expand women’s athletics. As she had been during her early years as a physical education instructor, Wynn was heavily involved in the American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation (now called the Society of Health and Physical Educators). She also served on the board of directors of the Council of College Women Athletic Administrators. In 1992, after the men’s and women’s sports programs at Southwest Missouri State University were merged into one athletics department, Wynn became senior associate director of athletics and senior women’s administrator, a position that she held for the rest of her career.

One of Wynn’s lasting accomplishments at Southwest Missouri State University was to establish the Fast Break Club. Under Wynn, the club, originally organized as a group of women’s basketball fans, grew into a network of boosters and supporters of women’s athletics. In addition to giving financial support, members of the Fast Break Club also encouraged area residents and university students to come to sporting events to cheer on the teams. Within its first decade of existence, the Fast Break Club’s efforts gained national attention and led to an attendance increase at women’s basketball games from around 300 fans per game to more than 8,000 by the early 1990s. The Southwest Missouri State University women’s basketball team responded to the surge in attendance and reached the NCAA Final Four in 1992 and 2001.

Dr. Mary Jo Wynn retired from Southwest Missouri State University in 1998 after more than forty-one years as a professor, coach, and administrator. University officials later called her “the backbone of one of the most progressive and successful women’s programs in the U.S.” In her honor, the university’s volleyball team now hosts the Dr. Mary Jo Wynn Invitational, while the Dr. Mary Jo Wynn Scholar-Athlete Award is given annually to a graduating female senior. The campus’s Dr. Mary Jo Wynn Academic Achievement Center is named after her as well. In 2014, the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame named Wynn a Missouri Sports Legend. Dr. Mary Jo Wynn passed away in Springfield on January 22, 2019.

Text and research by Sean Rost

For more information about Mary Jo Wynn’s life and career, see the following resources:

Society Resources

The following is a selected list of books, articles, and manuscripts about Mary Jo Wynn in the research centers of The State Historical Society of Missouri. The Society’s call numbers follow the citations in brackets.

Articles from the Newspaper Collection

• Barnas, Jo-Ann. “You’ve got to see this.” Kansas City Star. February 9, 1994. pp. D1, D3.
• Burke, Tim. “A kick in the budget?” Springfield Leader & Press. June 15, 1983. pp. 1D, 3D.
• Burke, Tim. “Women’s AD Wynn returned to SMS with a mission.” Springfield Leader & Press. June 17, 1983. pp. 1C, 3C.
• “Club sets up a ‘Play Day’.” Springfield News & Leader. April 13, 1958. p. D6.
• Coppersmith, Randy. “NCAA takes in women—but many not happy.” Springfield Daily News. January 16, 1981. p. 1D.
• Eddlemon, Marty. “SMS women’s AD stresses optimism.” Springfield News-Leader. June 9, 1987. pp. 1C, 4C.
• Hazelrigg, Larry S. “Lady Bears on the Move.” Springfield News-Leader. January 10, 1992. pp. 1C, 3C.
• Hazelrigg, Larry S. “SMS pioneer steps aside.” Springfield News-Leader. June 28, 1998. pp. 1C, 10C.
• Koehler, Steve. “Queen Lady Bear is a grizzly when it comes to selling team.” Springfield News-Leader. March 9, 1995. pp. 1A, 3A.
• Riley, Claudette and Wyatt D. Wheeler. “MSU’s Mary Jo Wynn dies at 87.” Springfield News-Leader. January 23, 2019. pp. 1A, 5A.
• Scranton, Lyndal. “Leaving a lasting legacy.” Springfield News-Leader. September 18, 2014. pp. 1D, 5D.
• “SMS Newcomers.” Springfield Leader-Press. September 12, 1957. p. 33.
• “SMS Plans to Field 7 Teams for Women.” Springfield Leader-Press. October 17, 1969. p. 15.
• “SMS’ Wynn named to National Group.” Springfield Daily News. November 6, 1975. p. 32.
• “SMS’ Wynn strongly opposes intervention.” Springfield Daily News. January 13, 1981. pp. 1C, 2C.
• Sylvester, Ron. “Caged in?” Springfield Leader & Press. February 9, 1982. p. 1C.
• Sylvester, Ron. “SMS, Evangel women Ads differ on value of AIAW rules.” Springfield Leader & Press. December 17, 1981. p. 1E.
• Sylvester, Ron. “SMSU coaches react angrily to NCAA vote.” Springfield News-Leader. January 18, 1981. p. 3D.
• Sylvester, Ron. “Women still fight battle for equality.” Springfield News-Leader. April 22, 1984. p. 1C.
• Sylvester, Ron. “Wynn keeps fighting for equality.” Springfield Leader & Press. May 1, 1981. p. 1C.
• “Two New Women Doctors in SMS PE Department.” Springfield News & Leader. August 8, 1971. p. C2.

Books and Articles

• Southwest Missouri State College. Ozarko. Springfield: Southwest Missouri State College, 1949–1972. [REF 378.778S9 V2]

• Southwest Missouri State University. Ozarko. Springfield: Southwest Missouri State University, 1972–1980. [REF 378.778S9 V2]

Manuscript Collection

• Missouri Society for Health & Physical Educators Records (S0010)
  The records contain bylaws, correspondence, meeting minutes, research abstracts, and photographs regarding the Missouri Society for Health and Physical Educators (MOSHAPE) mission to develop and promote health, leisure, and movement programs.
• Missouri Sports & Recreation Oral History Project (C4377)
  The Missouri Sports & Recreation Oral History Project is a regular, ongoing project conducted by the State Historical Society of Missouri. The project seeks to document the history of sports and recreation in Missouri, as well as notable competitive activities and events involving Missourians. Topics and issues addressed include organized sports, recreation, sports administration, sports journalism, and activism and protest in athletics. Several interviews in this collection feature former students, athletes, administrators, and coaches who knew Dr. Mary Jo Wynn.
• Oral History Collection (S0829)
  The Oral History Collection consists of reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes, and transcripts of oral histories conducted by Western Historical Manuscript Collection staff and the University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL) students. Dr. Mary Jo Wynn was interviewed for this collection in 1978.

Outside Resources

These links will take you outside the Society’s website. The Society is not responsible for the content of the following websites:

• Dr. Mary Jo Wynn Academic Achievement Center
  This website is hosted by Missouri State University and features information about the Dr. Mary Jo Wynn Academic Achievement Center.
• Missouri Sports Hall of Fame
  This website is hosted by the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame and features a page dedicated to Dr. Mary Jo Wynn.