Sports
ON THE SLATE
Thursday, Jan. 20
COLLEGE WOMEN’S
WRESTLING
Eastern Oregon vs. Southwestern
Oregon Community College,
Salem, TBA
Eastern Oregon at Corban, 5 p.m.
Friday, Jan. 21
COLLEGE MEN’S
BASKETBALL
Oregon Tech at Eastern Oregon,
7:30 p.m.
COLLEGE WOMEN’S
BASKETBALL
Oregon Tech at Eastern Oregon,
5:30 p.m.
COLLEGE MEN’S WRESTLING
Eastern Oregon at Missouri Valley
Invitational, TBA
PREP BOYS BASKETBALL
Cove at Elgin, 4:30 p.m.
La Grande at McLoughlin, 7:30 p.m.
Union at Stanfield, 7:30 p.m.
Nixyaawii at Joseph, 7:30 p.m.
Enterprise at Heppner, 7:30 p.m.
PREP GIRLS BASKETBALL
La Grande at McLoughlin, 6 p.m.
Union at Stanfield, 6 p.m.
Nixyaawii at Joseph, 6 p.m.
Enterprise at Heppner, 6 p.m.
Cove at Elgin, 6 p.m.
Saturday, Jan. 22
COLLEGE MEN’S
BASKETBALL
Southern Oregon at Eastern
Oregon, 5 p.m.
COLLEGE WOMEN’S
BASKETBALL
Southern Oregon at Eastern
Oregon, 3 p.m.
COLLEGE MEN’S WRESTLING
Eastern Oregon at Missouri Valley
Invitational, TBA
COLLEGE TRACK AND FIELD
Eastern Oregon at Lauren McClusky
Memorial Open, Moscow, Idaho,
TBA
PREP BOYS BASKETBALL
Weston-McEwen at Union,
5:30 p.m.
Pine Eagle at Elgin, 5:30 p.m.
Cove at Imbler, 5:30 p.m.
Wallowa at Griswold, 5:30 p.m.
Enterprise at Stanfield, 5:30 p.m.
PREP GIRLS BASKETBALL
Pine Eagle at Elgin, 2:30 p.m.
Weston-McEwen at Union, 4 p.m.
Cove at Imbler, 4 p.m.
Wallowa at Griswold, 4 p.m.
Enterprise at Stanfield, 4 p.m.
Tuesday, Jan. 25
COLLEGE MEN’S
BASKETBALL
The College of Idaho at Eastern
Oregon, 7:30 p.m.
COLLEGE WOMEN’S
BASKETBALL
The College of Idaho at Eastern
Oregon, 5:30 p.m.
PREP BOYS BASKETBALL
Pendleton at La Grande, 7:30 p.m.
PREP GIRLS BASKETBALL
Pendleton at La Grande, 6 p.m.
A9
Thursday, January 20, 2022
Meeting her goals
Former EOU soccer player set to compete for Philippines
Women’s National Team while reconnecting with family
By DAVIS CARBAUGH
The Observer
LA GRANDE — An Eastern
Oregon University women’s
soccer player is fulfilling a life-
long dream to represent her
country’s national team.
Kiara Fontanilla, a goal-
keeper who has spent the last
two seasons with the Mountain-
eers, was selected to compete
for this year’s Philippines Wom-
en’s National Team at the AFC
Women’s Asian Cup in India.
The appearance for the national
team has not only been a life-
long goal for Fontanilla, but the
experience also opened the door
for her extended family in the
Philippines to reconnect.
“I definitely didn’t see it
coming because I’ve had a hard
soccer career,” Fontanilla said.
“For this to happen was defi-
nitely a sigh of relief. Every-
thing I’ve worked for is now
paying off.”
Fontanilla has
been a solid con-
tributor defending
the net for the
Mountaineers over
the last two years,
Fontanilla in addition to her
experience with
Division I Cal State-Fullerton
and Division II Northwest Okla-
homa State University. The
goalkeeper will look to help the
Philippines Women’s National
Team place well enough at the
tournament to qualify for the
FIFA World Cup for the first
time in the country’s history.
Family roots
Fontanilla has struggled with
injuries in her playing time, as
well as battled mental obstacles
during her playing career. An
even larger obstacle may have
been the task of acquiring eli-
gibility to play for the Philip-
pines and help her father recon-
nect with his family in his home
country.
Fontanilla’s father, Francisco
Fontanilla, was born and raised
in the Philippines, but has spent
the last 40 years in the United
States unable to return home
after complications related to
his immigration years ago. Both
Fontanilla and her father went
through a grueling process of
acquiring the proper paperwork
to become dual citizens of the
Eastern Oregon University Athletics/Contributed Photo
Kiara Fontanilla readies to clear the ball in front of the Eastern Oregon University goal during a match in the 2021 spring
season. On Tuesday, Jan. 4, 2022, Fontanilla found out she was selected to represent the Philippines Women’s National
Team at the AFC Women’s Asian Cup in India.
Philippines, which allowed her
to compete for the national team
and for her father to visit his
family.
“That honestly really pushed
me to be on the team,” Fonta-
nilla said. “My main goal is so
that my dad can go home and
see his family.”
The chance to travel to India
for the Women’s Asian Cup
will allow Fontanilla’s father
to reconnect with family and
return to his childhood home.
Through competing with the
team in India, Fontanilla and
her dad will have the chance to
return to the Philippines and
visit family. For the 21-year-old
goalkeeper, the reunion will
mark the first time she has phys-
ically met much of her father’s
extended family.
“It’s really cool to see him so
excited to talk about his child-
hood, because usually he’s really
reserved about that,” Fontanilla
said. “For him to share that with
me was really cool.”
Earning her spot
In her time at Eastern, Font-
anilla recorded a 5-1-1 record in
seven career starts over two sea-
sons. In the 2020 spring season,
she went 5-0-1 and recorded five
shutouts along with 19 saves.
Last fall, Fontanilla appeared
in five games for the Mountain-
eers and recorded four saves
along with a 2.38 goals allowed
average.
Even with a strong resume,
Fontanilla found herself com-
peting for roster spots against
the top players of the Philip-
pines. After traveling to Cali-
fornia for training on Tuesday,
Nov. 9, Fontanilla joined
roughly 100 other players
seeking a spot on the national
team. The ensuing two months
of training consisted of gradual
roster cuts that left the players
constantly on edge. After the
roster was trimmed down to
about 30 players, Fontanilla
found out from her coaches on
Jan. 4 that she would be a part of
the team traveling to India.
“I was super excited,” Font-
anilla said. “It was super nerve-
wracking because I knew there
was only going to be three goal-
keepers that could go, but there
were six of us at that point.”
Fontanilla was one of six
first-year players on the national
team, earning a coveted spot
behind the team’s anchor in
goal, Inna Palacios. However,
some younger players did not
get to experience the same thrill
of making the team. Fontanilla
noted that seeing players get cut
after months of training together
and building bonds was a diffi-
cult process. For one 18-year-old
goalkeeper who did not make
the cut, Fontanilla looked to pro-
vide guidance and motivation in
a difficult time.
“I really wanted someone
like that there for me when I was
going through hardships ear-
lier in my career, but I only had
maybe one person there for me,”
she said. “I definitely wanted
to be a part of that process in
a positive way for the younger
players who didn’t make it.”
Learning curve
With experience in Divi-
sion I soccer and a successful
Eastern Oregon program, Fon-
tanilla is used to playing in
high-intensity environments.
However, the step up to interna-
tional level training was a sig-
nificant adjustment for the goal-
keeper in her first stint with the
national team.
“It was definitely a big jump
from EOU to here,” Fontanilla
said. “EOU is high level and
the training is really intense,
but the training (for the national
team) definitely was super high
intensity.”
Fontanilla noted that her
coaches with the Philippines
See, Soccer/Page A10
Father-daughter duo gear up for sled dog race
of them are “puppies” that are
about 1-1/2 years old — and their
energy does rub off.
“As soon as we started getting
them dressed,” they’re excited,
she said. “They are always way
more hyped than I am.”
By RONALD BOND
Wallowa County Chieftain
ENTERPRISE — Both
Morgan and Craig Anderson are
set for another run at the Eagle
Cap Extreme Sled Dog Race,
which returns at noon Thursday,
Jan. 20, after a year away due to
COVID-19.
“It’s so nice. I’ve done no
other big race yet (besides the
ECX, but) it’s definitely one of
my favorite races to go to,” said
Morgan Anderson, an Enterprise
High School graduate.
Though just 22, Anderson is
already a veteran when it comes
to running the Extreme. This will
be her sixth time competing in the
ECX, and her second time taking
to the path in the 200-mile race,
the longest and most grueling of
the four to be run this weekend.
“I did the junior race my first
year, then the 31-mile race three
times, then the 200 and now the
200 again,” she said. “I kind of
skipped the 100. Someone offered
me the dogs and I said, ‘Why
not?’”
Getting ready
The younger Anderson has
spent most of the last five months
training in Pinedale, Wyoming,
training for the race with fellow
ECX racer and family friend
Clayton Perry. In fact, most of the
dogs she’ll be running with in the
race this week belong to Perry.
“At this point, we’ve been
A family affair
Wallowa County Chieftain, File
Craig Anderson, of Enterprise, starts on the second leg of the 31-mile race in the 2020 Eagle Cap Extreme.
training dogs since the beginning
of September,” she said.
Getting the dogs’ endur-
ance built up for a 200-mile race
starts before there is snow on
the ground. Anderson said at the
beginning of training season,
rather than a sled, they used teams
of 16 dogs and would pull an ATV
four-wheeler.
“We would go 5 miles,” she
said. “We call four-wheeler
training the weight training. It’s
off and in neutral, or a lower
gear.”
The early stages are not run
at a high speed, with Anderson
saying they would go about 5-8
mph.
“Once snow hits, we can start
getting more distance and more
speed going,” she said.
Top speed, she noted, is about
16 mph. It’s a pace Anderson’s
group will maintain for short
stretches, with the average closer
to 8-10 mph.
The heavy training days are
long, for racers and dogs alike.
Late last week, Anderson and
Perry went on about an 85-mile
training run. They took off at
about 11 a.m., ran until about
7 p.m. rested until about midnight,
then finished the final stretch, get-
ting back about 4:30 a.m.
The training days are wearing,
but Anderson had a team largely
of younger racing dogs — seven
Meanwhile, her father, Craig,
will be running in the ECX for
the second time. He said he enter-
tained thoughts of running the
100-mile race, but settled for the
31-mile race, which was the dis-
tance he ran previously.
A combination of items
resulted in Craig competing —
previously volunteering for the
race, acquiring more sled dogs,
the proximity of the race to his
hometown of Enterprise and
his daughter racing among the
reasons.
“It’s kind of good for the dogs,
too,” he said. “It’s good for the
dogs to see other dogs and pass
other dogs.”
As the younger Anderson got
more involved, so did Craig. In
fact, four of the sled dogs he owns
are siblings to Morgan’s lead dog
and the one she owns, Gale.
“I moved away to college, so
my dad no longer had me to look
after, so I think I got replaced by
dogs,” she quipped.
Running sled dogs has resulted
in Morgan and Craig getting sev-
eral opportunities to run together
See, Race/Page A10