Cindy Wyatt

Cindy’s story is part of the evolution of women’s sports in America. There were no female interscholastic sports, so she competed in the local Junior Olympics and AAU development meets. When only 14, at the National Junior Championships (14-17 years), she won the shot and discus and made the women’s division finals. Her senior year, she requested permission to compete with the boys’ team, because she was throwing the boys 12# shot over 42’, which would have placed in many meets but was denied by the State.

Graduating at 17, she won the discus and set an American shot record in the National Juniors Championships and qualified for the USA team to compete in Russia, Germany, Poland and England. She was recruited by The University of Hawaii for their new women’s track team. They were the first Division I university to subsidize female athletes more than a decade before Title IX legislation.

Cindy qualified for six more USA teams and defeated the British National Champion in London. Cindy won the Women’s Indoor Nationals in 1963 and represented the USA at the Pan American Games in Sao Paulo, Brazil, finishing second in the shot, fourth in the discus.

When it was seldom recommended for athletes especially females, Cindy began training with heavy weights in high school. She became known in the lifting community, performed several strength exhibitions in Hawaii, named Hawaii’s Female Athlete of the year, appeared on the cover of Strength and Health, a national fitness magazine and in David Willoughby’s Super Athletes. In powerlifting, she was the first American woman certified as an international referee able to judge world records. When the USA International Powerlifting Federation decided women could compete, Cindy was appointed the national chairperson responsible for formulating rules for womens’ meets. In the first Women’s National Championships, she won her 165# class and the outstanding lifter award.

As a master athlete, she has seventeen national titles shot, discus, hammer, weight throw pentathlon and four American records.

Cindy is in: The USA Women’s Powerlifting Hall of Fame, The Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame, The Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame and the Western New York Track and Field Hall of Fame, wherein The Cindy Wyatt Award for Excellence is given to an outstanding female athlete.