Hall of fame OSU team has multiple Pendleton connections

Published 7:00 am Tuesday, October 6, 2020

PENDLETON —The 2000-01 Oregon State University football team brought together players from across the country to produce one of the school’s best teams of all time, but the team also had two Pendleton connections.

Kyle Rosselle and Richard Seigler are members of a team that was recently inducted in the Oregon State University Athletics Hall of Fame, a ceremony honoring them postponed by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Steve Fenk, an associate athletic director at OSU, said the team will get an “actual celebration” sometime in 2021.

But what links together Rosselle and Seigler is more than just the years they spent at Oregon State. For Rosselle, Pendleton is the hometown that springboarded both his football and post-football careers. For Seigler, Pendleton is the town he chose to settle down in to further his own professional career.

A Hall of Fame year

Rosselle may have become the rare football player to matriculate from Pendleton High School to Division I football, but football wasn’t his favorite sport growing up.

Rosselle’s first love was basketball, but he soon realized that football would give him more opportunities, especially when his performance at football camps at OSU and the University of Oregon garnered him attention from some big programs.

Rosselle, a defensive end, said he chose to attend Oregon State in 1997 because of Mike Riley, the head coach that would eventually win 93 games across two stints in Corvallis.

Seigler grew up a world away in Las Vegas, but he also came to OSU because of its head coach.

Riley had already decamped for the NFL by the time Seigler arrived on campus in 1999, but what sold Seigler, a linebacker, on Riley’s successor Dennis Erickson was his run of success at the University of Miami.

In 1999, OSU had its first winning season in 29 years and by the next season, Rosselle and Seigler knew they were playing on a special team.

Both described the intense practices as an indicator that Oregon State was on the rise.

“The practices were at a level of competition that I never thought I would be a part of,” Rosselle said. “It was the most competitive, aggressive team day-in and day-out that really challenged each other to be their best.”

By the end of the season, OSU’s fought its way to an 11-1 record, capped off with a Fiesta Bowl victory over Notre Dame.

The team would produce five All-Americans, including Seigler, and several future NFL standouts, including Chad Johnson, TJ Houshmandzadeh and Nick Barnett.

If Division I college football had incorporated a playoff back in 2001, Rosselle was confident that Oregon State would have been crowned national champions.

Rosselle left OSU in 2001, while Seigler stayed on for a few more years, although the Beavers were never able to achieve the same level of success.

The Pendleton connection

After graduating, Rosselle quickly knew that he wouldn’t have a future in professional football.

“There’s a separation between a high school and a collegiate athlete,” he said. “And there’s a bigger separation between college and the NFL.”

Rosselle delved into K-12 education, returning to Pendleton in 2002 to become a teacher at Pendleton High School and help out as a coach for the football team.

Career advancement pulled him further west, first as an athletic director in The Dalles, then as an assistant principal for Hood River Valley High School, where he has worked since 2013.

Seigler would play three years in the NFL with the 49ers and Steelers, but once he hung up his cleats, his interests turned toward psychology.

While Seigler’s interests were initially in providing therapy to athletes who suffer from head trauma, his interest in mental health treatment broadened as he returned to school to get his master’s degree to become a therapist.

Having returned to Las Vegas, he was also looking for a change in scenery for his wife and three kids.

Seigler had stayed in touch with his OSU teammates after college, and Rosselle was always singing Pendleton’s praises.

When he and his wife decided to take a tour of the Northwest, Pendleton was included as a top.

Seigler’s first experience with Pendleton was the 2018 Round-Up, and although the town is much different the other 51 weeks of the year, he was sold.

He moved his family and opened his practice, Enrich Therapy, on Southwest Frazer Avenue. Rosselle’s family helped erect the sign for the business, which specializes in treating anxiety, depression and relational conflict between couples.

“That’s just Beavers helping Beavers,” he said.

Besides the fact that his commute into work only takes a few minutes, he loves the people and the way they come together as a community. He’s now involved in “Healthy Body, Healthy Mind,” an upcoming Pendleton initiative meant to boost students’ mental health through a combination of physical education and social-emotional learning.

Seigler has tried to stay out of the spotlight since his playing days, a small photo of Reser Stadium the only indication of his OSU stardom that hangs in his counseling office.

Despite all the differing paths Seigler, Rosselle and his teammates have taken, Seigler said he still stays in contact with them all the time through a running group chat.

“It’s a solid fraternity,” he said.