Wendy Wyland

[5] The family moved to Penfield, New York around 1970 where Wendy began training at six with well-known Coach Betty Perkins-Carpenter and the Perkins Swim Club.

[6] Wyland competed in gymnastics at the age of ten and in August, 1975, took a seventh place in trampoline while representing Penfield in the National Junior Olympics in Ithaca, New York.

Perkins-Carpenter recognized her early talent and noticed that the degree of difficulty of the dives she performed were the same as many of the High School divers.

She won a bronze in the 1983 Universiade in Edmonton, Canada, in 10-meter Platform diving behind Lu Wei and Zhou Jihong of the Chinese team.

[1][3][15] More commonly known as Wendy Wyland, she represented her native country at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, winning the bronze medal in the Women's 10m Platform competition.

She finished behind gold medalist Zhou Jihong of China and Michele Mitchell of the United States, with whom she had trained at Mission Bay Divers.

With the Mission Bay Makos, she trained alongside outstanding fellow divers Greg Louganis, Michele Mitchell and Kent Ferguson.

Wyland had reconstructive shoulder surgery in late 1987, which may have affected her ability to qualify for the 1988 Olympics, though she recovered after a five month layoff and continued to train and compete.

She had a second shoulder surgery in the late eighties broke a hand and thumb, and later had over sixty stitches in her leg from a fall in a locker room.

[16] [14][1][2][17] In a disappointing turn of events in the 1988 August Olympic trials in Indianapolis, Wyland just missed the United States team, finishing third in Platform diving.

[20] She ran the Webster Aquatic Center and then was the head swimming and diving coach and pool manager at Rochester Institute of Technology.

[1][2][3] Wyland was engaged to Chad Anthony Lucero, brother of an Olympic diver, in May 1990, and had planned to marry in June of that year.