Cindy Roybal never had the opportunity to play high school basketball, growing up in Pecos at a time when Pecos High School did not have a girls basketball team. So, despite being an accomplished basketball player, she was relegated to playing the drum in the marching band.
When she graduated from high school and left her drumming career in the dust, Roybal found her way to a tryout for one of the first professional women’s basketball teams, the All-American Red Heads. She played for the traveling professional team for a year, before she caught the coaching bug.
Forty-six years later, Roybal walked across the stage, July 26, at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Albuquerque, to receive her induction into the New Mexico High School Coaches Association Hall of Honor. Her life’s mission of providing Northern New Mexico girls with the opportunities that she was never afforded looked to be accomplished, as she was handed a plaque that officially established her in the Hall of Honor.
The Association inducted two other coaches into the Hall of Honor — Rafael Roybal, a longtime girls basketball and track coach at Fort Sumner High School and Louie Baisa, who was the head football coach at Lordsburg High School for 27 years, before retiring last season.
Of the three coaches inducted, Cindy Roybal is the only one actively coaching, heading for her first season at Santa Fe High School, after leaving Española Valley High School this past season after a three-year stint.
“I think everybody else will remember me as the winningest coach in Española,” Cindy Roybal said. “I doubt that anybody is going to come close any time soon. Three straight district titles. Three straight semi-final appearances in the Pit.”
She had 71 wins and 16 losses in her time at Española Valley, and coached three Lady Sundevils that went on to play college basketball.
“I will remember fondly the kids that I had there (at Española),” she added.
A number of Cindy Roybal’s former student-athletes showed up to the ceremony, primarily those from Santa Fe Indian School, where she coached two separate times.
Kaitlyn Romero, a former standout at Española, was planning on attending, but could not get off from her job.
Fidel Trujillo, Cindy Roybal’s assistant coach at New Mexico Highlands University from 1999 to 2002, gave her introductory speech. He outlined her accomplishments throughout the years — as she coached for Pojoaque Valley High School, Santa Fe Indian School and New Mexico Highlands University. He also tied her career to the song “The Impossible Dream” from the play “Man of La Mancha.”
“It’s surreal,” Cindy Roybal said. “I mean, Fidel, what he said about me was just unbelievable. He put it so eloquently. It was beautiful.”
This was Cindy Roybal’s second induction into a hall of fame. In 2012, she joined the All-American Red Heads onstage at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., to receive her first major hall of fame honor.