It couldn’t have happened at a worse time.
Logan Williams gave up playing in important travel baseball tournaments in high school that would have given him maximum exposure to college coaches.
Why? The reason was simple.
He also was a football player, and he surely wasn’t about to miss a game against rival Saint Louis.
So with a victory over Kamehameha in the first round of the ILH tournament well in hand, the stage was set for the then-Punahou senior.
A winner-take-all ILH final between the Buffanblu and the Tua Tagovailoa-led Crusaders, who had ended Punahou’s four-year run of league titles a season earlier, was next.
Then it happened.
“I had been practicing some running back during the week and I was like, ‘Coach, throw me in there and let me get a run,’ ” Williams recalls.
He was the focal point of the Punahou defense from his middle linebacker spot. Just 15 days earlier, he was a key part of a Buffanblu defense that held Tagovailoa without a touchdown for the first time in his high school career in a 33-20 win.
Punahou was up four touchdowns when Williams took his first handoff of the season, sprinted 13 yards and planted to try to juke Kamehameha All-State linebacker Andrew Aleki.
He heard a pop and then Aleki fell on top of him. When he tried to get up, he couldn’t.
That’s when reality set in — Williams’ reality, that is.
“I knew it was something serious. It was a little hard to get up,” Williams recalled. “But I wasn’t too distraught about it. I don’t know why, I just kind of had a feeling that everything would kind of work out in the end.”
His high school baseball career was over after fears of a torn ACL were confirmed, but it wasn’t the end of his career entirely.
From Yavapai County in Arizona to Lawrence, Kansas, and now Fargo, N.D., Williams has taken that carefree attitude to the middle of the lineup for the North Dakota State baseball team, which just a year ago played in an NCAA Regional.
Williams, hitting primarily in the cleanup spot, leads the Bison in homers with six, including deep blasts in consecutive games over the weekend in a three-game sweep of Fairfield in the final tuneup before beginning Summit League play.
“I’ve loved the journey so far,” Williams said in a phone interview Tuesday. “I’ve been catching, DHing, working out at third. I’m just focused on this season and going out with a bang.”
Williams made the most of his two years at junior college and accepted a Division I offer from Kansas for his final two years of eligibility.
It was the first Division I offer he had ever received.
“I made the decision quickly over Thanksgiving break,” Williams said. “I had to make a decision of, do I take this offer or do I wait until the end of spring to see what I get?
“After not having any offers out of high school, I kind of just had to go with the mentality of the first one I get that is a good one is probably the one I should take.”
It was a perfect situation. He could play with a Jayhawks squad that included high school teammate Kahi Bisho and fellow Hawaii transplants Stone Parker of Kailua and Mililani’s Kaimana Souza-Paaluhi.
Williams got in all of 10 games with two starts when the pandemic hit. Instead of getting ready to open Big 12 play, he was suddenly back home, completing his courses online.
He returned for one more season in 2021, but with a year of eligibility remaining, his scholarship was up.
It was time to find one more place to go.
“We actually played NDSU last year, so I was a little familiar with them,” Williams said. “(Head coach) Tyler Oaks said we need a catcher and a possible corner guy and I told him after playing them I knew what they were about.”
He began his college career in Arizona, where it would get cold when he thought it would always be hot. Then came the Midwest, where it was also much colder than he expected, with average low temperatures in the 20s in February when the season started.
When he enrolled at North Dakota State, this time he was well aware of the environment.
“You get blizzards out here, 25 miles per hour wind chill, negative-30-, 40-degree days, it’s crazy,” Williams said. “If I had to do it all over again I would do it the same way. Like I said, I’ve loved the journey.”
Even if he needed a few more winter coats.
Name: Logan Williams
School: North Dakota State
Class: Senior
Height: 6 feet 1
Position: C/DH/3B
CAREER STATISTICS
Yavapai College
YEAR GP AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG.
2018 35 87 21 31 8 0 1 20 .356
2019 47 135 24 42 9 1 3 29 .311
Kansas
YEAR GP AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG.
2020 10 13 0 1 0 0 0 0 .077
2021 21 37 6 6 3 0 0 2 .162
North Dakota State
YEAR GP AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI AVG.
2022 14 49 9 15 1 0 6 15 .306
