athletics
News articles
Sponsor Spotlight: Banner Bank
The Banner Bank Track became the first sponsor-named facility on campus this spring.
Good to the bone
About one in 430 registered donors get matched with a recipient and successfully donate bone marrow. EOU Women’s Soccer Coach Jake Plocher became one of them last May. Plocher joined the registry of donors with a cheek swab in 2012 to support a soccer player who helped coordinate the drive on campus. Six years later,...
On the air
Local news anchor Mark Hanrahan, ’04, finds himself on the frontline of community issues nearly every day. From behind the evening news desk at KREM in Spokane, he tells viewers the latest happenings at 5, 6, 10 and 11 p.m. each night. “Journalism offers something new and interesting every day,” Hanrahan said. “It’s a very...
A winning team
Anji Weissenfluh, ’94, hates to lose. But it’s all right because the long-time women’s basketball coach and athletic director rarely does it. EOU’s all-time winningest coach and the CCC’s 2017-18 Athletic Director of the Year said she’s driven by a fear of failure more than a love for trophies. That humility grounds Weissenfluh, who said...
Pulling her weight
“So we’re just standing there looking at each other, holding more than double our body weights in our hands. We got 30 seconds in and she’s looking strong, then all of a sudden at about 40 seconds she dropped it.” Ashlee Munsey, ’10, ’11, held onto her 375-pound metal frame for about a minute before...
Crossing the finish line
For the first time in seven years, the Mountaineer track and field student-athletes competed at home in La Grande on March 16. The team’s home-opener christened EOU’s brand-new track surface and facilities, which were installed last fall with funding from the EOU Foundations’ Building Champions campaign. Head coach of track and cross-country Ben Welch cut...
Donor Spotlight: Denver and Jean Ginsey
A numbers game A love for baseball and talent for athletics in general guided Denver Ginsey from student body president at La Grande High School to Eastern Oregon College in 1946, and his aptitude for math and science kept him in the game long after graduation. Denver, ’48, and his wife Jean, and her two...
In their shoes
After six years away from his home in Nigeria, EOU senior Peter Eke boarded a flight in July that took him — and hundreds of pairs of shoes — back to the community where he grew up.
Running away with it
Conference Champs Student-athletes on the men’s outdoor track and field team were determined to bring home a conference championship in 2018. “They told me, ‘Coach, we’re not competing for it, we’re going to win it,’” Welch said. The men’s team reclaimed the Cascade Collegiate Conference title for the first time since 2015. Ranked third and...
One big, trappy family
Three years ago John Shorts agreed to serve as advisor for the brand-new Trapshooting Club at EOU. “We discussed it and he said yes because we figured it was just one night a week,” his wife Kathryn Shorts said. “We laugh about that now.” Kathryn and John are both staff members on campus. He works...
Running with the Lions
Jace Billingsley is 5’9” and 189 pounds — among the shortest and lightest players on the Detroit Lions’ active roster — but he’s used to exceeding expectations. Billingsley grew up in Winnemucca, Nev., a town of less than 8,000 that lies about six hours south of La Grande. He was an all-state quarterback for the...
Teamwork Targets Confidence for Shotgun Sports Atheletes
Eastern Oregon University’s Shotgun Sports team not only showed up in Las Vegas, Nev., but were on target. Facing much larger programs such as Arizona State, Colorado State, and Boise State, the Mountaineers captured two team titles and 19 medals at this year’s West Coast Championship. Their performance exemplified what happens when athletes put the...
