JERSEY CITY, N.J. (NJCUGothicKnights.com) | The New Jersey City University athletics department mourns the passing of Hall-of-Fame women's swimming and diving alumna Lynn B. Pearce Gatchell `73. Gatchell, 69, died on September 30 after a multi-year battle with cancer.
 
Gatchell was inducted into the Lawrence R. Schiner Athletics Hall of Fame on October 17, 1987. Her mother Dr. Lillian Greenwalt Pearce `43, was inducted seven years later — October 14, 1994 — to form the only mother-daughter combination in the NJCU Hall of Fame. Dr. Pearce passed away on April 15, 2014 at the age of 90.
 
Gatchell, a four-year competitor for then-Jersey City State College from 1969-73 on a team coached by her mother, was an outstanding springboard diver whose 1973 record of 139 points for a five-dive program was never broken before the sport was discontinued in 1981. She was considered the most outstanding springboard diver in the history of the women's varsity swim team. She finished in first place in 60 percent of all diving events in which she competed, and was second to a teammate in 25 percent more. 
 
She was an excellent swimmer who won six different types of events during her career at JCSC — 100-yard freestyle, 200-yard medley relay, 100-yard individual medley relay, 50-yard backstroke, 50-yard breaststroke and 200-yard freestyle relay. Most notably, she was a member of the Gothics' 1973 record-setting 200-yard individual medley relay team. She went on to coach diving at the Jersey City YWCA.
 
Gatchell would move to Massachusetts and settle in Martha's Vineyard, where she was a science teacher from 1975 to 2012. She remained involved as an active NJCU alumna throughout her life. 
 
Her mother, Dr. Pearce, was a 1994 Hall of Fame inductee as a women's swimming coach and multi-sport participant who graduated from the institution, then known as New Jersey State Teacher's College at Jersey City, in 1943. Dr. Pearce served as the head swimming coach while a member of the faculty at Jersey City State College from 1968 through 1978 and continued as an assistant coach from 1979 to 1981. She retired from the college in 1992.
 
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