Kacy Catanzaro
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Kacy Catanzaro
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Kacy Esther Catanzaro January 14, 1990 Glen Ridge, New Jersey, United States |
Kacy Esther Catanzaro (born January 14, 1990) nicknamed Mighty Kacy, is an American gymnast and athletics-based television personality. She is noted for being the first woman to qualify for the finals of the television sports challenge American Ninja Warrior and the first, and so far only, woman on it to complete a City Finals course (in 2016 Jessie Graff finished second on a City Finals course based on 'the farthest the fastest' but did not complete it).
Born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Catanzaro grew up and attended high school in nearby Belleville and is of Italian descent. (She is apparently unrelated to NFL kicker Chandler Catanzaro.) She is a relatively small woman, standing only 5 feet (1.5 m) tall and weighing only 95 pounds (43 kg). She began doing gymnastics at age 5. She attended Towson University in Towson, Maryland from 2009 until 2012, studying early childhood education on an athletic scholarship.
Catanzaro competed in gymnastics for Towson in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association and was named the Southeast Regional Gymnast of the Year in 2012. She was also named the 2012 Eastern College Athletic Conference Gymnast of the Year and was the top-ranked competitor in that conference for that year.
She has worked for Alpha Warrior, an obstacle-course gym in San Antonio, Texas, since February 2013.
Catanzaro spent two years training for American Ninja Warrior alongside her then-boyfriend and co-competitor Brent Steffensen. She did not complete the qualifying course in Venice, California but was an invited wildcard at the 2013 finals, where she fell early on the Giant cycle/ring.
In 2014, Catanzaro became the first woman to complete the qualifying course of American Ninja Warrior (Season 6), making it up the warped wall on her second try at 5:26.18 at the Dallas qualifiers, ranking her 21 out of 30; this also makes her the first woman to make it up the warped wall in competition. On July 14, 2014, Catanzaro competed in the Dallas finals of American Ninja Warrior. She was the first woman ever to complete a city finals course (and the second woman to attempt it after Jessie Graff in season 5), qualifying for the national finals in Las Vegas with a time of 8 minutes, 59 seconds. (Through 2016 she remains the only woman to have ever completed a City Finals course.) Host commentator Akbar Gbaja-Biamila remarked "I've seen greatness during my NFL career...And I've been in awe of people, but I am really in awe of Kacy". The run had been especially notable because due to her short stature, many of the obstacles looked difficult to manage and in one case, she had to leap between boards whereas other competitors could traverse them. Her achievement made her a social media phenomenon, with her run being viewed over 100 million times; supporters on Twitter coined the hashtag #MightyKacy. Kacy Catanzaro failed to complete the first round of the National Finals in Las Vegas. She made it past the first three obstacles, including the Giant Ring and the Silk Slider, before she fell attempting the Jumping Spider, where her full extension was simply too short to hold the position.
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