From 1990 to 2006, Missouri State Lady Bear basketball earned 13 NCAA Tournament bids, won or shared 11 Missouri Valley Conference regular-season titles, captured nine Valley tournament championships, and totaled 393 wins in the process—a dynasty in the truest definition.

During that era, most women’s college sports powerhouses toiled in relative obscurity and mostly-empty facilities, with little marketing, scarce publicity and token promotion.

Not Lady Bear basketball. Crowds of 8,000 and more placed MSU among the NCAA’s top 15 in home attendance in every one of those historic seasons. It also created an atmosphere, a culture, an energy that produced a home-court advantage unique for its time, and rivaling anything in college sports history.

If it had been a Broadway Show, that 17-year Lady Bear run would rank among the 10 longest-playing hits, matching legendary productions like A Chorus Line and Les Miserables for staying power. And that Lady Bear basketball show also played well on the road--especially in March--reaching the NCAA Final Four in 1992 and 2002 and capturing a WNIT title in 2005.

The Lady Bear stars on stage included All-Americans Jackie Stiles, Secelia Winkfield, Melody Howard and Tina Robbins. The award-winning director for the first 12 years of that run was Hall-of-Fame head coach Cheryl Burnett, who coached MSU teams to 14 NCAA Tournament wins (no other Valley coach has more than three), and those two Final Fours.

But that show’s initial creator and producer was a tiny, pleasant, smart and engaging woman named Dr.  Mary Jo Wynn—a pioneer, not only for women in sports, but also an elite promoter of sports for women. She spent 41 years on the MSU campus, coaching and leading women's sports, and connecting MSU success with the Springfield community.
 
Early Life
The day before Christmas, 1931 marked the arrival of Mary Jo, the seventh child born to William and Tina (Russell) Wynn of Hartville, Mo.

For the unfamiliar, Hartville (pop. 453 in 1930; 594 in 2020) is the county seat of Wright County, an hour’s drive east of the Missouri State University campus. It first received wide recognition when a 1959 tornado ripped through it and destroyed much its business district. It recently made news as the closest municipality (about 10 miles) to the geographic population center of the United States.

Growing up through the heart of the Great Depression and World War II, Mary Jo joined her siblings in the daily work it took for a large family to survive, but still found time to join her brother, Russell, and neighborhood boys playing sports. 

Until she discovered that being a girl meant being left out. And it started her on a path to do something about that.
 
A Pioneer Fighting for Daughters
A 1953 Missouri State graduate, Wynn was a member of a dance group called Orchesis and the university’s drum corps.  Three years later, she earned a master’s degree from Northern Colorado and later added a doctorate from the University of Oregon in 1971.

As a new faculty member in 1958, Wynn established MSU’s volleyball and women’s tennis teams—the foundation of what would grow to 11 sports for women.

Despite all of her initiative, Wynn wasn’t officially named the first director of women’s athletics at Missouri State until 1975.  Among the coaching legends she brought to MSU as AD were volleyball coach Linda Dollar, current softball coach Holly Hesse, and Burnett.

Hesse remembers the tugs-of-war for resources between Wynn and Bill Rowe, the men’s AD whose MSU career spanned 45 years, serving as AD from 1982 to 2009.

“What’s that line? You catch more bees with honey than vinegar?” said Hesse. “That was Mary Jo. We knew the university had limited resources in terms of facilities, scheduling, salaries and budgets. She fought tooth and nail … but was always polite and professional.”

The fiery Burnett admired how Wynn could calmly command a room.

“She was gentle, kind, and always courteous,” said Burnett, “but she had a voice like a lion when she saw the time was right to use it, and others found her to be focused, determined and relentless.”

Burnett tied Wynn’s leadership with SIU legend Dr. Charlotte West’s formative duo in league meetings.

“I’ve heard this from so many people, it has to be true,” said Burnett. “Everyone else in a conference meeting would have their say about an issue, until they finally thought it was discussed and settled … and then Charlotte and Mary Jo would make a point—frequently the same point—that hadn’t been considered, and the conversation would go in a completely different direction. That is how they led.”

The MSU athletics departments remained separate until 1992. Upon the merger, Wynn served as an associate athletics director and MSU’s first Senior Woman Administrator until her retirement in 1998.

Wynn admitted, often, that her work wasn’t easy—but always worth it.

“It was always a challenge,” Wynn said, as she received “Sports Legend” status from the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2014.  “If something didn’t work, well, we’d just try to do it another way.”

Hesse, whose 35 years as MSU head softball coach have produced more than 900 wins, remembers the benchmark of Wynn’s arguments for gender equity.

“Mary Jo would remind people that the daughters of the world deserve the same as the sons of the world,” said Hesse.
 
Promoting A Basketball Box Office Smash
Wynn chose Burnett—still in her 20s--as Lady Bear head basketball coach in 1987. In the next two seasons, the Lady Bears were a combined 16-37.

“I have no idea what she saw in me,” Burnett said, of her relative inexperience at the time, “but I knew I never wanted to disappoint her.”

Wynn’s patience prevailed. Inspired by Wynn’s innovative leadership and the work of the Fast Break Club, Burnett’s teams brought national attention to Springfield with more than 50 weeks ranked in the AP Top 25. The Final Fours were part of 10 NCAA tournament appearances, and 11 regular-season Valley titles from 1991-2002.

As Wynn and the Fast Break Club sold tickets and stacked promotions—“we didn’t have one promotion every game; we had four or five,” said Burnett--the Hammons Student Center crowds grew and grew.  Burnett recruited players and coached teams that played—and won—not just at Hammons, but on the national stage.

During the dynasty, the Lady Bears played 36 home games against 21 different Power Five conference foes at Hammons, including nine games against Top 25-ranked teams (MSU was 6-3 against those ranked opponents at home). 

We had a lot of great things and great people in our program, and the Fast Break Club and the  Hammons crowd were a huge recruiting advantage,” said Burnett. “But there was more. When recruits came to campus, Mary Jo would arrange for them to meet the president, Dr. Marshall Gordon, and his wife, Annette. Not something that happened in women’s basketball most places in those days.”

In the 1980s, Wynn partnered with a retired local school principal--Susie Farr--to sell local schools on Elementary School Day—an event that brought dozens of school busses delivering thousands of kids, parents and teachers to Hammons. Burnett remembers one of the early “school days.”

“With all the kids coming, we still had to take care of our regular fans attending the game,” said Burnett. “Judy Slothower, Mary Jo’s administrative assistant, and her mother, sewed maroon seat covers to reserve prime seats for our regular fans.”

In typical, Lady Bear, one-effort-producing-two-results fashion, the covers did more than save seats for loyal fans.

“Parents, teachers and other folks saw those ‘reserved’ seat covers and asked ‘how can I get those?’” said Burnett. “Elementary School games produced a lot of season ticket holders.”

Dollar remembered an incentive Wynn offered to help build basketball attendance.

“Mary Jo would take the people who sold the most tickets to the women’s national championship as her guests,” said Dollar. “It was quite an incentive.”

The Fast Break Club was so successful in helping build Lady Bear basketball that it joined previous inductees Wynn, Burnett and Dollar in Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.
              
“Women Helping Women”
When Burnett took over as head basketball coach in 1987, Lady Bear attendance averaged less than 900 per game and the team wasn’t winning. When Burnett left the job in 2002, Lady Bear crowds had grown to more than 8,000 per game and the team had become a national powerhouse.

Uniquely, the Fast Break Club connected businesswomen in the community with the Lady Bears and each other—with Wynn serving as “mentor-in-chief.”

“Women helping women,” said Burnett. “Whether it was getting up the corporate ladder, entering politics, building businesses, advancing careers … Mary Jo was always ready to help, and the women that she helped? They supported what we were doing at Missouri State.”

Burnett saw Wynn’s work across a broad spectrum of sports and the community.

“While Mary Jo was out there at the forefront of many national battles women fought in college sports she also was on the city’s utilities board,” said Burnett. “She was Springfield’s first female Rotarian. If there was ever a community need or cause, Mary Jo supported it. Her coaches saw that. Our student-athletes saw that. The results are that we all saw the value and need of supporting our communities.”
              
Dollar Expanded on Wynn’s Volleyball Coaching Success
From the early 1970s to 1995, Linda Dollar compiled 758 volleyball coaching wins, retiring from coaching as the all-time Missouri Valley Conference volleyball wins leader. Six regular-season championships, and a winning league record every year made the Missouri State volleyball team a force to be reckoned with in the Valley.

Dollar played for Wynn’s MSU volleyball team in the pre-Title IX era.  

“We were a college team, but we competed mostly in AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) tournaments,” said Dollar. One of her strongest memories was the only time she remembered Wynn making a rare departure from her soft-spoken, even-keel communication style.

“It was between sets, and I don’t remember who we played, where we played or if we won,” said Dollar. “All any of us (teammates) could remember later is that it was the only time we ever heard Mary Jo raise her voice.”

As graduation neared, Wynn’s voice changed Dollar’s career course. Wynn discovered that Kansas legend Marlene Lawson was looking for someone to coach the KU volleyball team. Dollar had signed a teaching contract, but Lawson and Wynn convinced her to go to Kansas instead.

"At Kansas, I was teaching classes, coaching the volleyball team and trying to finish my master’s degree,” said Dollar, who accomplished all of the above in just one year.

“Mary Jo asked me to come back and coach the team (at MSU). I agreed, but I didn’t want to be the head coach that first year because some of my teammates were still playing,” she said. “So Mary Jo was the head coach that year (1972-73).”

Dollar took over as head coach the next year and later joined Wynn’s MSU administrative team as well.

“Mary Jo was quiet, always thoughtful,” said Dollar. “But when she spoke, people listened, because she thought through ideas carefully, and was ready to answer any questions.”
 
Wynn Mentored Hesse
Hesse arrived in Springfield in 1988 after a Creighton playing career for National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Famer Mary Higgins, and serving as an assistant coach for another NFCA Hall of Famer, UMass’ Elaine Sortino. Wynn liked her resume.

“Mary and Elaine were great mentors,” said Hesse. But Wynn was at another level.  “Calm, poised and professional, she wasn’t just a leader for MSU. She was a force for widening the path for women in sports.”

Hesse has her own Valley legacy, which includes coaching recent Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame inductee Barb Gaines, Illinois State head softball coach Tina Kramos, and 10 members of the MSU Hall of Fame.

Hesse treasures a personalized reminder of Wynn that sits on the wall next to the door to her office—an autographed, framed portrait from Wynn’s induction into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame.

“It was an auction item at an MSU athletics fundraiser,” said Hesse. “When I saw it, I vowed not to leave the event without it. It’s a reminder every day—not just to me, but to anyone who visits our (softball) offices--of her legacy.”
 
Memorialized at MSU
Although Wynn passed away in 2019, she is front-and-center in MSU athletics beyond the banner hanging from the rafters of the Hammons Student Center’s successor, Great Southern Bank Arena.

The Dr. Mary Jo Wynn Academic Achievement Center, located in the Forsythe Athletics Center, focuses on the “student” phase of student-athlete by providing all MSU student-athletes with study areas, computer labs and academic advisement support.

Besides volleyball’s annual Dr. Mary Jo Wynn Invitational Tournament, MSU softball has a banner on the outfield fence recognizing Wynn’s contributions. It reads: “Dr. Mary Jo Wynn: Pioneer. Legend. Leader.”

“I talk about Mary Jo with our student-athletes every year,” said Hesse. “But that banner reminds our team, every day, of who she was and what she means.”

According to Burnett, Wynn is responsible for much of what has made MSU athletics the success that it is.

“So many things that she started, or that trace back to her, are what makes the athletics program proud and successful,” said Burnett. “It is overwhelming to think about what she has meant to our programs and our university. Student-athletes, starting from the 1960s, and every decade moving forward, have a better experience at Missouri State because of her.”
 
What It’s All About
Wynn’s bottom line, in her own words, was the focus on young women having better lives.

 “My greatest joy is the student-athletes and their graduation, and the things they have been able to do in whatever walk of life,” Wynn said, in a speech after retiring. “That’s what it’s all about.”

At Missouri State, earning degrees, winning championships, and living better lives is still “what it’s all about.”

Wynn’s core belief about college sports remains a bedrock despite the cultural changes happening now. What sets Wynn apart is how went beyond her campus to bring life and collaboration and joy to a growing Springfield area community now famous for entertainment … by putting on a Broadway Show of her own.