Sports Reporter, Wallowa County Chieftain

Wrong NW town. She was from Walla Walla.

And her name was Tonya. Gorgeous, if not a nutcase. She was on the Chicago season.

 

Ahh, very good catch. My knowledge of the Pacific Northwest is limited. ... Very much a nutcase, but most hot girls are. Kidding!

 

Wallowa County is where the folks headed to the coast on the Oregon Trail stopped and said, "Close enough." Come to think of it, so is most of Idaho. But it is a pretty beautiful area for the part of Oregon it's in. Yeah, you'll have to drive a couple hours to get anywhere, but unless you're at a major in the NW, you'll have to do that anyway. Not a bad starting or stopping point would be my guess.

And most folks from Walla Walla are a little nuts. I blame the obsessive-compulsive city name and the sweet onions.

 

RFB - you certainly are too kind to bring a halt to that list as quickly as you did.

 

What can I say? It's a gift.

 

Just to fill in a couple small gaps:

Enterprise (the lone 2A school of the three, the others are 1A) is now the Outlaws, though you will still find some Savages merchandise around town. Joseph and Wallowa both play 8-man football, so it's not a bad spot if you're into that.

The area is rich with natural beauty, though you'll be pretty much on your own for things to do. Chief Joseph Days is one of the best rodeos in the region, attracting some of the top talent in the nation. The area is surrounded by the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest, and roads in and out of the area are sparce. Highway 82 is two lanes up through the mountains all the way to La Grande (70 miles), which is the nearest Interstate on-ramp.

Dave Hassler, a former SE and man of many hats, moved on to a paper in The Dalles. There's been at least one, maybe two, people who've held the position since then. It's not a bad place to start, or end, a career.

 

Eight-man football is a blast -- wide open spaces and the best athletes really get to do their thing.

As someone who knows the area (and the paper) quite well, I can tell anyone who is interested in this about both the company that owns the Chieftain and the newspaper/staff/community. Just PM me. I agree that it's a great gig for the very start or end of a career in sportswriting.

Also, Hassler was the ME in Enterprise; he just filled in on sports when the SE got double-booked. He's writing sports full time at the little daily in The Dalles now.