Portland Timbers MLS team travels to HR to host community events

Star midfielder Diego Chara and defender Jorge Villafaña had been announced as the two Timbers players who would be coming on the road trip, but the Timbers also brought goalkeeper Jake Gleeson, defender Alvas Powell, mascot Timber Joey, and Portland Thorns defender Stephanie Catley to join in on the fun as well.

The first leg of the Timbers’ trip through the valley started at Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital, where players were introduced to hospital staff before visiting patients in various wings. Villafaña headed across May Street to the hospital’s dialysis clinic, where he spent time talking to several patients, posed for photos with doctors and nurses, as well as signed an autograph or two.

Monika Drury, a dialysis technician at the clinic, was appreciative of the Timbers coming in to visit, saying it helped brighten the patients’ days and break up the monotony while they undergo treatment.

“This is so great that they’re able to come in here,” she said.

Up at Wy’east Middle School, players helped brighten up the garden and the greenhouse used in the school’s SPROUTS program, which is an after school horticulture class to help kids learn valuable gardening skills, as well as a way to promote healthy eating. Players tore through a brushy area with garden hoes, helped lay down bricks, and painted a mural on a garden shed door under the direction of Allison Fox, an artist with Arts in Education in the Gorge. Fox designed the door’s painting, which was drawn in Hispanic folk-art style and featured trees and roses to represent the Timbers and Thorns, with soccer balls in the middle of the flowers.

Fox said the players and Timber Joey did a great job of painting the door and were easier to manage than her usual art students.

“I told them the fact that I don’t have little kindergartners running around making messes… it’s a piece of cake,” she said.

Peg Wooten, an eighth grade instructional at Wy’east who heads up the SPROUTS program was equally pleased with the Timbers’ help Monday.

“It’s so exciting; it’s a dream come true,” she said. "When Providence called with this opportunity, I had to pinch myself.”

After lunch, the players headed to Westside Elementary to conduct a free youth soccer clinic at the fields in conjunction with the Hood River Valley High School girls soccer team. Approximately 90 kids attended the clinic and even got a chance to play games and run drills with the players. At one point, the children lined up to face off against Villafaña, Chara, and Timber Joey, prompting one boy to call out, “We have to play against them?! That’s not fair!”

No telling if it wasn’t fair for the kids… or for the players.

After the clinic, kids and parents lined up for an autograph session with the players and Timber Joey at the school, as well as play some games with a chance to win some prizes.

The trip concluded with a visit to the River City Saloon in downtown Hood River, where Timber Joey facilitated a Q&A with fans and players. Susan Frost, public affairs manager for Providence Hood River, asked players what their favorite part of their visit to Hood River was, and most answered that they thought the view was beautiful. Gleeson commented that “everyone one we’ve met here has been really friendly.” Another fan, Jennifer Pauletto, of Hood River, asked Catley what the recent FIFA Women’s World Cup meant for soccer in the U.S. Catley responded that she felt that women’s soccer was gaining attention and would continue to gain more attention.

And Matt Ellis, also of Hood River, asked perhaps the most important question of all: would anyone like a beer and if so, what kind?

Gleeson said he would and requested an IPA variety from Hood River (“and put it on the Timbers’ tab,” he said, prompting laughter from the crowd.)