If you’ve never heard of Tiny Vidano, you’re not alone.
After all, besides the Native American game of Toka, you’d be hard-pressed to find any sort of stick-and-ball field games in the Southwest.
That wasn’t the case 30 years ago, when Vidano turned Albuquerque Highland (N.M.) into a veritable field hockey dynasty. Even before the dawn of Title IX, there were only a few cities in New Mexico with the sport: Roswell and Santa Fe, along with Albuquerque.
Vidano, who got her degrees from Illinois State and the University of Michigan, moved from her Illinois home to Albuquerque in 1948 and never left. She helped form a state athletic association in New Mexico, and helped Highland fund its girls’ sports with community service projects (remember: these days were not far removed from government-funded projects such as the WPA).
She served as coach for numerous female sporting events at Highland, such as basketball, volleyball, tennis, ping-pong, and speed-a-way, a Gaelic football variant. Between 1955 and 1957, Highland’s female athletic teams never lost a game. Her field hockey teams went undefeated in 1974 and 1975 and won state championships on three other occasions.
And perhaps that’s because Vidano put her heart and soul into instituting statewide field hockey competition in New Mexico, something which, regrettably, has died out.
Vidano passed away March 20, 2008. I think it’s up to us in the field hockey community to re-kindle what she did in non-traditional field hockey areas of the United States.
TopOfTheCircle.com 
Leave a comment