"I remember the first time we combined with some boys from Napier Boys' High School. They thought they could just turn up and sing but soon realised there was so much more than that ... it was about working together just as is the case with different parts of a sports team," she recalled.
Born and raised in Otago, Eddy first started playing hockey when she attended Taieri High School which is now known as Taieri College.
"We played in the mud. When I arrived in the Bay in 1961 to start work as a teacher at Napier Girls' High School and began playing at Napier's Marewa Park, that was paradise compared with playing down in Otago," she recalled.
A fast and skilful inside right, Eddy helped Hawke's Bay win three national K Cup inter-provincial titles and played for New Zealand from 1967-73. She regarded a 12-week international tour, which took in Canada, the US, Britain, Holland and South Africa, as the highlight of her playing career.
"We played in a big tournament in Holland and finished third. That was considered pretty impressive back then.
"One of my biggest claims to fame was making Marg Hiha look good," Eddy joked referring to fellow Hawke's Bay Sports Hall of Fame inductee and fellow forward Hiha, who is often referred to as the matriach of the code in the Bay.
The mother of two daughters and grandmother of five, Eddy coached the New Zealand women's team from 1973-80.
Her 1980 team was regarded as New Zealand's best hope for an Olympic Games women's hockey medal, which has yet to be won.
However, the Hawke's Bay dominated team never got the chance to play.
The squad was among the non-travellers when the New Zealand Olympic and Commonwealth Games Organising Committee decided no sponsor or government funds would be used to send a team to Moscow.
This was a belated response to the then US President Jimmy Carter's call for nations to boycott the Games in the wake of the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan the previous year.
During her coaching stint with the national team, Eddy mailed out heaps of training schedules to players as the squad seldom assembled for training weekends. She ranked Otago's Jenny McDonald as the best player she coached or played alongside.
Eddy believed Tom Turbitt, a long-time coach of successful Hawke's Bay women's teams, should have got the New Zealand women's team's coaching job ahead of her. But in those days there was no way a male would be considered for a national women's coaching role.
She still keeps in regular contact with players she either coached or played alongside at national level. Three years ago Eddy joined 10 of them for a cycle expedition on the South Island's Central Rail Trail.
A regular spectator at Black Sticks women's matches in New Zealand, Eddy ranked this season's team as the best she has seen.
"That's when they play well because they don't always put it together. But they are capable of doing well and could be among the medals at next year's Olympics."
Eddy agreed the turf-based game is so different to what hockey was during the 1960s, 70s and early 80s.
"The fitness and conditioning levels are remarkable. It's such a fast game and our Black Sticks can do some amazing stuff."
Eddy still manages Hawke's Bay Masters hockey teams and when she isn't busy with these roles or coaching barbershop singers, she will likely be found walking or cycling.
