STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Kristy Pigeon is best known for founding what is now the Swiftsure Ranch therapeutic riding program. But, before she founded the Sagebrush Equine Training center for the Handicapped Arena, she was a tennis champion.

And Pigeon was honored for her tennis feats on Thursday as she was inducted into the U.S. Tennis Association Hall of Fame in Northern California, along with five other tennis greats: Tom Barnes, Steve DeVries, Dave Higaki and Ted Robinson.

Pigeon first picked up a racquet when she was 13 and, by the time she was 16, had won 16 Sectionals and been a finalist at 16 Nationals. In 1968 she won 18 Sectionals and became the National 18 champion in singles and doubles.

She won the Girls Singles Championships at Wimbledon in 1968 and earned a No. 1 world ranking in the 21 and under category that year. She turned pro before graduating from high school and was one of the “Original Nine,” along with American pros Billie Jean King.

Back in those days, Pigeon noted, there was a prevailing assumption that nobody wanted to watch women play tennis. Philip Morris and Virginia Slims organized several professional tournaments with the idea, “You’ve Come a long way baby.” And the young players got up early to do radio interviews to encourage fans to come out and watch them.

"As one of the members of the Original Nine players who signed $1 contracts with Gladys Heldman in 1970, Kristy Pigeon was there for the birth of women's professional tennis," Billie Jean King said. "She was so courageous to join with us and chart a course that years later would open doors for women to have a place to compete, to be celebrated for their accomplishments and not their looks and to make a living playing tennis. Kristy's free spirit--and that wicked lefty serve--was a welcome addition to the dynamics of our group. She stood with us and she helped us change, and make history, for tennis, for women and for something that was bigger than all of us."

In 1975 Pigeon relocated to Sun Valley, where she directed the John Gardiner Tennis Camps and founded the Elkhorn Tennis school.

She then hung up her racquet to found the Sagebrush Equine Training Center for the Handicapped.

“When I first met Kristy, she was wearing cowboy boots and well-worn jeans and saddling a horse so a former judge with advancing MS could do some therapeutic horseback riding,” said Juli Miller, who introduced Pigeon during the festivities this week. “I had no idea she had ever hit a few tennis balls.”

For nearly two decades Pigeon’s imagination resourcefulness and leadership for the riding program harnessed the unique power of a horse to transform lives, offering riding therapy at no cost to hundreds of families each year, added Miller. And she was a longtime board member with the Nature Conservancy in Idaho, bent on preserving, protecting and enhancing grasslands, forests and wetlands for wildlife habitat.

“It wasn’t until I happened to ask about a photo in her home office that I learned she had been a very young tennis champion and a member of the original Virginia Slims group,” said Miller. “Her early years in the tennis world were just a warm-up act. After she transitioned to running tennis camps and a tennis club, she moved on to winning team roping championships, guiding big game hunger and skiing and fly fishing.”

Pigeon said she’s “proud of the work we all have done to bring tennis to where it is today, equal prize money for both women and men. And in 2015 the U.S. open Women’s final sold out before the Men’s Final!Yes, we have come a long way.”