Cindy Coburn-Carroll
Professional Bowler
Cindy began bowling at the tender age of nine, participated in junior leagues and competed in high school for Kenmore East High School. Accompanying her mother Doris on tour fueled her passion for the sport and for competition. While still in high school she was averaging 200 and has never taken a step backward.
Partnering with her mother Doris in 1977, they set a Women’s International Bowling Congress Doubles record of 1444. At age 19, she became the youngest women in the history of the WIBC to hold the nation’s high average of 211.
Coburn-Carroll went on to bowl for Erie Community College and the University at Buffalo before joining the Ladies Professional Bowling Tour. In just her second year on the tour, she was one of three women bowlers to break the single season earnings record. In the 1981-82 season, Cindy made the Bowlers Journal All-American team for the first time and from then on the records and honors just kept rolling in.
A winner of over 15 professional titles throughout her career, her finest and most rewarding win came in 1992 when she captured the title at the WIBC Queen’s Tournament. With a winning mother and champion like Doris, one would assume her mom was the guiding force in teaching Cindy her sport, but it was her father Frank Coburn who taught her the sport.
For Cindy the early years on the tour was a real “family affair,” both she and her mom were competing, while dad was aboard as her coach and often times the family cheerleader. Cindy’s dad provided her the technical and, at times, much needed moral support especially in those beginning years on the tour, when the competition and travel was a challenge for the young competitor.
In 1984, Cindy won one of the most cherished awards of her career when she received the Robby’s, an award for sportsmanship voted by the players of the Professional Women’s Bowling Association.
Awards and honors given to Coburn-Carroll are a testament to her winning ways. She is a four-time recipient of the Buffalo Women’s Association Bower of the Year award in 1985, 1986, 1987 and currently in the year 2001 and has been inducted into the Women’s All Star Association Hall of Fame, the SUNY Hall of Fame, the Erie Community College Hall of Fame, Kenmore East High School Hall of Fame and the National Junior College Athletic Assoc. Hall of Fame.
Reflective of her time on the tour, Cindy looks back with gratitude for the times when she and her mom were competing, and with fond memories of all the people she has met and places she has visited throughout the years. Through it all, she has always been thrilled by the competition and never fears losing that excitement.
Today, a wife and mother, her successful career focuses more on regional tournament play. Last season Cindy had the fourth highest Buffalo Women’s Bowling Association average of 216, with a composite average of 217.
Cindy and her mother are the only mother and daughter combination to be inducted into the Hall of Fame’s of the WIBC, the New York State Women’s Bowling Assn., the Buffalo Women’s Bowling Assn., and the Ladies Professional Bowling Assn. And in 2001 she becomes the first daughter to join her mother as an inductee in the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame.
