When the Northern New Mexico Vocational-Technical Training School decided to assemble a basketball team in 1969, Joe Garcia was asked to be a coach, but what he was really interested in was playing.
He would end up doing both, serving as a player-coach for the new team — nicknamed the Roadrunners — and 50 years later, Garcia and his brother, Ben Garcia, did the grunt work of organizing a reunion for the first ever basketball team representing what is now Northern New Mexico College.
They were successful in their efforts, as the 1969-70 Roadrunners were commemorated for their 50-year anniversary at center court inside Eagle Memorial Gymnasium prior to Northern’s game against the University of the Virgin Islands on Dec. 13.
Joe Garcia said the occasion would have never been possible without the help of Northern head coach Ryan Cordova, who not only assisted in organizing the reunion, but also had E & E Sports & Graphics in Española print replica Roadrunner jerseys in the team’s original teal and gold colorway.
“Cordova is doing a hell of a job with this program here at Northern and when we talked, he said, ‘We can make it happen and I want to have you guys over for a game,’” Joe Garcia said. “When I was coaching, it was tough because I wasn’t a grown man; coaching and playing at the same time was hard to do.”
Not all of the players could make the reunion either due to death or geographical reasons, but many of those had family members step in to take their place in the ceremony.
Cordova said it was a special moment, but also a bit of a history lesson for many in the Española Valley, including himself.
“Not a lot of people, even I didn’t know they had a college team 50 years ago,” he said. “It was a special moment and those guys help set the groundwork a long time ago in that gym in El Rito. Now we’re here and hopefully in 10, 20 or 50 years from now we’ll be D1 and will have a brand-new venue too.”
On the court, the Eagles (2-10, 1-0) did more than enough to make their predecessors from El Rito proud, as Northern dictated virtually the entire game in its 93-70 win over the Bucs.
After some tough sledding against higher-classed competition, the Virgin Islands was the first Association of Independent Institutions conference opponent the Eagles faced this season, and the result was exactly what Cordova was looking for after his Eagles battled plenty of NCAA Division II and NAIA Division 1 teams on long road trips to prepare themselves.
“This week we had a full week of practice, we were rested and we had time to prepare for our opponent,” he said. “That makes a huge difference and I didn’t want this to just be a 5-point win, I wanted it to be an explosive win. What this does is it gets our players reinvested because its easy to get discouraged on the tough first part of the season.”
Explosive the Eagles were, and it didn’t take long. After the Virgin Islands scored the first four points of the game, Northern responded with a 12-0 run and it would be the only time of the game where a lead change occurred.
The Eagles rolled to a 50-26 halftime lead behind a 66 percent shooting effort from the field, which included five field goals apiece from Naquwan Solomon, Estevan Martinez and Tyrique Weaver.
The trio combined for 38 of the Eagles’ 50 first half points, and for the game, Solomon led the team with 21, while Martinez finished with 18, just ahead of Weaver’s 17.
“Tyrique and Estevan were active and Naquwan was getting a lot of baskets in transition and I think they fed off each other,” Cordova said. “They’re our three leading scorers and there’s a reason they are; it’s not because they shoot a lot, it’s because they make things happen and they execute.”
Northern led by as many as 31 on the night, and it built its first 20-point lead of the game with 4:04 remaining in the first half when Solomon conducted a quick touch pass near the baseline to find a streaking Weaver wide open under the basket for a dunk.
Javier Roper had a wide-open slam of his own in the second half, and his dunk is what gave the Eagles the game-high 31-point lead with 13:58 remaining in the game.
Using a variety of defenses payed dividends for Northern, and switching from zone to trapping zone, man-to-man and full-court press left the Bucs confused and unable to execute consistently on the offensive end.
Virgin Islands shot 44 percent for the game and only made 14-of-35 field goals in the second half. Keith Gilmore scored a game-high 30 points to lead the Bucs and Josh Goss added 17.
“We put in a new defense and it was something they weren’t able to scout,” Cordova said. “It was giving them fits and I thought that led to them shooting bad shots and then they had no one in good rebounding position.”