Thank You, Lynn

By Jessi Pierce

Dear Lynn Olson,

Thank you…

There are plenty of words and sentiments to follow that initial phrase of gratitude.

“Thank you for bringing girls’ hockey to associations across the state of Minnesota, and eventually across the country.”

“Thank you for bringing girls’ varsity hockey and the high school state tournament to Minnesota.”

“Thank you for helping put women’s Division I, II and III hockey on the map. For adult women’s hockey leagues and for a women’s team in the Olympics.”

“We’re not sure all those ‘thank yous’ capture all you did.”

Lynn, a Richfield native, was recently recognized by the National Hockey League with the 2020 Lester Patrick Trophy, awarded for her outstanding service to hockey in the United States. The reasons are tangibly outlined in the ‘thank yous’ above, but really, we want to again say thank Lynn for…  

…Being a player

Lynn was 29 years old and a mom to a two-year-old and newborn daughter when a broomball teammate asked her if she’d like to play hockey. Having grown up skating outdoors at the local park, she figured playing a game on blades might be just as fun. So, she bought herself a pair of hockey skates and began skating on a senior women’s team.

She was having a blast. And she wanted her own daughters, Lisa and Becky, to have that same experience. The only problem? In the late 1980s, there wasn’t much by way of girls’ hockey.

“My oldest started on the Washburn youth program and she was one of two girls on their team,” recalled Lynn. “I knew I wanted to try and help figure out how to make girls’ hockey more accessible to girls.”

“It’s funny, I didn’t really know that it wasn’t normal for girls to play hockey because my mom was playing as far back as I could remember,” added Lisa, now a mom to three hockey-playing girls of her own. “I would go and watch her and her teammates play, and I immediately thought, ‘I want to play too.’

“I played with a group of girls outside at the Minneapolis Parks and Rec but there really wasn’t a whole lot of us, or a whole lot of options for an all-girls’ organized team at that point. My parents searched far and wide for a girls’ team until we finally found one in Stillwater. There was a lot of time driving back and forth from Minneapolis up there to play, but I loved it.”            

…Being a leader

Beyond being a hockey-playing hockey mom, Lynn found a calling in working to make girls’ and women’s hockey available across the state. She first started with the women’s league, getting the then Minnesota Women’s Hockey League (now WHAM) as an official affiliate with Minnesota Hockey (then MAHA) in 1986. That lobbying earned her the title of Women’s Hockey Director with Minnesota Hockey, a position she held until 2007.

From there Lynn shifted focus back to her daughters and grassroots. She helped orchestrate the USA Hockey Girls & Women’s National Championships in 1988 which eventually earned her a seat at the then all-boy’s table as the first woman on the USA Hockey Board of Directors in 1989.

“Lynn was the only woman in the good-old-boys club at the time,” said Shawna Davidson, who played with Lynn in the senior rec league and was a direct beneficiary of hers as a member of countless U.S. women’s national teams. “She was doing all of this work behind closed doors to pioneer for us to be able to compete locally and internationally.”

Lynn’s sights moved from associations to high school. Her two daughters were a part of the first-ever sanctioned varsity girls’ high school game on Nov. 14, 1994 between the Academy of Holy Angels and South St. Paul, a game in which, of course, Lynn coached. While that same season an unofficial state tournament was played between eight teams representing 11 different schools, it wasn’t until Feb. 24, 1995 that the first-ever MSHSL girl’s hockey tournament was berthed at Aldrich Arena

“It was absolutely fantastic,” recalled Lynn of the four-team tournament which featured Stillwater, Apple Valley, South St. Paul and Henry Sibley. “People were waiting in line to get into the arena, and the 3,500-seated Aldrich sold out immediately. The excitement was just so high. Everybody was ready for this.”

Davidson remembers going down with her mom to witness history. Having been cut from her boy’s varsity team and with no girls’ outlet, Davidson admits tears of pride welled in her eyes.

“It was just absolutely incredible,” said Davidson. “You have rosters full of seventh graders because they were finally given the opportunity to play on an all-girls’ team. They were these rockstars out there. And you had that for awhile, a few teams of young dominant players completely dominating. But now, you see the depth of these programs. Healthy youth programs, too, from the bottom up. It’s amazing to see how the numbers have grown.”

With grassroots blossoming, it was on to the national scale. Lynn worked tirelessly alongside Walter Bush to get women’s hockey into the Olympic Games.

“The International Ice Hockey Federation finally agreed to it in 1998 after the ’94 Olympics in Norway,” Lynn recalls. “It was everything we worked so hard for 25 years in Minnesota was finally coming about, so it was really exciting to me.”

Two Olympic Golds, three silvers and a bronze since,

“Every little girl who dreams of being an Olympian some day has Lynn to thank,” Davidson said.         

…Being a supporter

Lynn has taken a significant step back in recent years, passing the baton on to others who are ready for the pioneering task.

Now, she gets to watch any of her four granddaughters skate in plump-full girls’ associations. She gets to watch them dream and live in a world where.

“My daughter, Livia, has tryouts this past weekend and it’s just remarkable to know that mom had something to do with that,” said Lynn’s daughter, Becky. “It’s so cool to me that now girls can be selected for development camps, for Division I college, for really many of the same opportunities the boys have had for so long.”

When you remind Lynn of what she’s done, she points to all the support she too had around her. And for her, the reward is in seeing the skill and registration numbers continue to grow. That’s thank you enough.

“Skill levels have increased, girls are getting phenomenal coaching and moving on to these high school programs and college and it’s off the charts exciting,” she says. “You’re seeing the highest numbers for registration on the girls’ side of programs around the nation. That means more female volunteers, girls participating and just being involved.

“Not to mention you have the National Women’s Hockey League and I can’t wait to see that become a full-fledged program where women can play hockey as a true profession.

“It’s just amazing to witness it continue to grow and I know that it will only go up from here. I am just as honored to have been a small part of it all.’