Lynne Robinson retires from role as
 Athletic Director

Steve Morano
MSMU Class of 2024

(6/2023) For the first time in sixteen years, Mount Saint Mary’s University will have a new person in the Athletic Director’s office. This comes as long-time athletic director, Lynne Robinson, announced her retirement from the Mount earlier this year. She took the job in 2007, ascending from many different roles within the athletic department to overseeing it all. In exiting from her tenure as director, she ends a very illustrious career not only at the Mount, but within the whole ecosystem of college athletics that has changed so much since her graduation from the Mount in 1979.

Robinson, who is an Emmitsburg native, grew up around the Mount. This was due obviously to her proximity to the institution but also because of her father, legendary Mount basketball coach and member of the College Basketball Hall of Fame, Jim Phelan. Phelan was head coach of the men’s basketball team at the Mount from 1953 to 2003 and logged 830 career wins as coach. With her parents’ involvement in both the Emmitsburg community and the Mount community, it was a no-brainer where Robinson was to attend college. Before attending the Mount, Robinson joined the Fairfield Striders, a girls’ track team in nearby Fairfield, Pennsylvania that toured across the country. This was at a time when women’s and girls’ sports were still very undervalued, even at the Mount, which at the time, was still a male-only institution. This experience with the Striders eventually led her to play sports at St. Joseph’s High School in Emmitsburg, which only closed its doors in 1982.

In 1975, Robinson attended the Mount for her first year of college and immediately became involved in athletics. The Mount had only been co-ed for three years at that point, so the population of the school was still very uneven. But Robinson and the rest of the female athletes at the Mount where a part of the beginnings of women’s sports at the university, with Robinson being a part of one of the first women’s basketball teams at the school, coached by Mount legend and former NBA player, Fred Carter. "There was a group of us that played two or three sports," Robinson explained, "we would be at field hockey practice, we would also have our sneakers with us, we would leave practice at 6:00, go eat dinner and then go over to the gym to have basketball practice!" However, in the fall of her senior year, Robinson tore her ACL and due to a lack of athletic trainers in the department, they did not diagnose it. As a result, Robinson did not play out the rest of her senior year at the Mount.

From that point of her injury, Robinson started to see athletics differently, from a new angle. After graduation, she went back to her high school to coach and teach. Eventually, the Mount added a track and field program. At that point in the Mount’s athletic history, they were a AIAW affiliated school for women’s sports looking to move to the NCAA; to do that, they had to have women administrators within their athletic program to meet the requirements of Title IX, which was passed in 1972. Along with coaching women’s track and field, Robinson became the Coordinator of Women’s Athletics in 1982.

Robinson was also involved with the jump from Division 2 to Division 1 in 1989. With that, the University needed to hire a coordinator for athletics to make sure they were in accords with all the NCAA rules. This led to Robinson getting her first full time job in the Athletic Department as a whole, being hired as the Compliance Coordinator in 1997. She stopped being the coach of the women’s track and field team but kept the role of Coordinator of Women’s Athletics, just under a different name to the position. This was the role that finally cemented her status as an athletic administrator at the Mount. At this point, the Mount kept adding sports, especially new women’s sports, and Robinson oversaw all of this, being named Assistant Athletic Director in the early 2000’s. The adding and further progression of women’s sports at the Mount under the supervision of Robinson eventually led to her being named to the role of Athletic Director in 2007 after the retirement of Harold "Chappy" Menninger.

Throughout her time as athletic director, Robinson has experienced many highs and lows within the department. "Around 2012 or 2013, there were some cuts that the university made, and unfortunately, some of the sports had to be cut, both men’s and women’s golf along with men’s soccer," she said. "Putting away those three sports was the most challenging time professionally because of the impact it had on the student-athletes in the programs including all the alumni associated with the programs as well." It was a great achievement for both Robinson, the athletic department and the great alumni network that Mount sports fosters to end up bringing all three of the programs back and to greater success. "For me, the blessing has been all the really great colleagues that I’ve met through the years at the Mount; it has really been the student-athletes—that has been the true blessing and the memories that will keep on," Robinson said.

Robinson has been part of the Mount community in many different ways her whole life. From growing up in the Mount community because of her parents, to her role in the early days of women’s sports at the university. This legacy that she has built for herself ultimately culminated in her work within the administration of the athletic department itself, leading her to become the first female Athletic Director in the university’s 215-year history. In her tenure as Athletic Director, Robinson has seen the growth in many different aspects of all of the athletic programs. From the unbridled success of many of the teams in NCAA competitions, to the further promotion and success of women’s sports, to the future updates to the athletic facilities coming in the next few years set in motion by Robinson, she has left her impact on the athletic program and the history of the university in a massive way.