White River Junction
Raynolds died after a years-long battle with cancer on April 16 at the age of 54. The Pomfret resident spent 32 years as a professional and collegiate swimming coach, the last 10 of them at UVAC. On Saturday, close to 200 people — more than half of whom were former athletes under Raynolds — gathered in the back of UVAC’s parking lot for a celebration of her life.
“It is (with) great emotion and pride that I stand before you as my own professional career and personal life has been so positively influenced by my mentor and my best friend,” said Signe Linville, the head men’s and women’s swimming and diving coach at Colby-Sawyer College and a swim coach and instructor at UVAC, to start off the ceremony.
For Abby LeBlanc, who is raising money in Raynolds’ name for the 37th annual Prouty — a two-day event in July that benefits the Norris Cotton Cancer Center — Raynolds’ legacy is as much about her swimming instructions as the life lessons she left behind.
“She’s meant everything, absolutely everything, to me,” LeBlanc said. “She was like a second mother to me. … She was tough, but tough love. In middle school, I was having a really hard time. I was bullied. I was struggling. Dorsi was there. She helped me get through everything. She inspired me; she motivated me. She gave me so many life lessons. I owe everything to her.”
LeBlanc was one of eight speakers who addressed the crowd in remembrance of Raynolds, a group that included Linville; former student-athletes Ellie Thompson, now a registered nurse, and Kristin Burlew, who is going into her sophomore season as a member of the swim team at Saint Michael’s College; and UVAC board member Jack Hoops, who was part of the decision to hire Raynolds in 2008.
“Dorsi came at a critical moment in the life of this team,” Hoops said. “She changed us, she saved us, and we won’t forget it.”
Raynolds was a 16-time All-American and butterfly specialist at Ithaca (N.Y.) College before turning to collegiate coaching, where she held jobs as an assistant at Boston University and as head men’s and women’s swimming coach at Drew (N.J.) University.
But Raynolds made a name for herself as the head women’s swimming and diving coach at the University at Buffalo, serving in that capacity for 13 years. During her tenure, Raynolds led the Bulls to five Mid-Continent Conference championship titles and qualified 20 swimmers for NCAA national meets. She also was named coach of the year three times and led 48 student-athletes to first-team all-conference honors. She left Buffalo as the program’s all-time winningest coach.
It was during her time at Drew, however, that Hoops first heard of Raynolds. That an accomplished collegiate swimming coach would want to lead a youth swimming program in the Upper Valley surprised him.
On Saturday, Hoops said UVAC would not exist without her.
Thompson and Burlew remembered a tough coach who inspired growth and a strong work ethic.
“The first day we met Dorsi (in 2008), she was wearing a bright yellow shirt, khaki shorts, (and) she came in just like a ball of fire,” Thompson said. “She came in with so much energy and made swimming fun for us.”
Celia Slater, who served as the head women’s basketball coach at Florida’s Lynn University from 1998-2003 and a longtime friend of Raynolds, remembered speaking to Raynolds about the need for women coaches in collegiate athletics. Slater co-founded the NCAA Women Coaches Academy in 2003. She remembered Raynolds being in one of her first classes.
“Dorsi was in that first class in 2003 as a student, then she came back year after year to teach diversity for us. She was our diversity trainer,” Slater said. “We were very passionate about the fact that the world really needed positive female role models. That’s where we connected.
“I have so many memories of watching her teach, tears rolling down her face,” she added. “She felt the human dignity of everyone. … My picture of Dorsi is this fierceness. She had the heart of a lion.”
Linville and Jen Houde, a swim team coach and Raynolds’ coaching partner at UVAC, concluded the ceremony by releasing 32 monarch butterflies — one for all of Raynolds’ years of coaching. The gingko tree, on display near the podium, is scheduled to be planted soon as part of a memorial dedicated to Raynolds.
“Dorsi, she disliked talking about her disease,” Houde said during the ceremony. “She really disliked the common platitudes that went along with someone fighting cancer. She particularly disliked the term ‘courageous battle.’ She just thought she was doing what she needed to do to beat the cancer. She didn’t see it as courageous. But I believe she was courageous, and tenacious, as she privately fought to live.
“Like the gingko, she truly was a force of nature.”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.