Who’s That Bulldog? — It’s Logan Meyer!

Logan Meyer, a Bulldog wrestler and MHS senior, doesn’t always take the direct road to where he’s going, but his detours have taken him to some interesting places. Take wrestling, for example, kids typically begin wrestling in the youth wrestling program at a young age. Not Logan. Logan started wrestling in his freshman year of high school. 

He recalls, “In my eighth-grade year, I was on the golf team, and I was trying to earn my way to the state golf tournament. Randy Patnoe told me I needed to work out and lift weights in the winter to get stronger so I could hit the ball farther. My freshman year, I was very close to going to state. I wanted to make it.  So, I joined wrestling. I figured it would make me stronger, I’d hit the ball farther, and I’d lose weight, too. So, that’s the only reason I joined wrestling.”

It made his grandpa happy, though. His grandpa had  good memories of watching Logan’s dad wrestle three years for Grant-Deuel High School. Logan says, “So, there’s a little family history with wrestling.”  

One match that stands out for Logan happened near the end of his freshman year. “We were wrestling in Webster. It went long and was getting late, and I was in the last match. While I was wrestling, they started tearing down the mats and ripping the tape off. They left us with just a sliver of the mat to wrestle on. I won in two periods, but it was really strange.”

Logan says wrestling made him tougher. “Wrestling forces you to work harder, and if you can’t handle it, well, you just can’t handle it. You build stamina and see if you can outlast the other guy. If you can handle wrestling, you can handle anything!”  

Logan’s favorite sport, though, is trap shooting. “Wrestling is all physical, trap shooting is all mental. If you mentally beat yourself, you won’t do well. You have to tell yourself you can do it.” 

His inner coach offers the same advice regardless of the sport. “In both, you are working towards a common goal while doing your best. You have to keep yourself going. You need to get this takedown and need to mentally prepare yourself to go six minutes. In trap, you need to mentally tell yourself to shoot the 25 clays. In 4-H, I have gotten so high that I am a teen ambassador in South Dakota for shooting sports.”

He also was named to the 2021 South Dakota Academic All-State Wrestling Team, which required maintaining a 3.5 grade point average or higher and being involved in the sport for three seasons. The award was sponsored by the South Dakota Wrestling Coaches Association.

Logan also participates choir, band, and theater.  He says, “I sort of jumped into theater the same way I landed in wrestling.  In eighth grade, I happened to be walking by the theater and they were putting away the set from the spring play. The director looked at me and said, ‘You are going to be in it next year.’ So, she gave me a part.” 

But, he says he’s gotten more excited about building the sets and running the sound and the lights. “I like the behind-the-scenes things more than acting. Acting has too many variables. Behind the scenes, it’s all the same thing every time.”

His preference might stem from when he acted in the play And Then There Were None. He says “I had a part that I was really good at, but about a week before the show, somebody quit. I had to bump up and take their part too. I had to memorize their lines and be two completely different people. It was nerve-wracking.”

What does he do in his free time?  He laughed and said, “Free time, I’ve never had that!” But,  he listed fishing and hunting, eating pasta, and listening to bluegrass music as some of his favorite things.

Logan, like thousands of other people his age, says he is undecided where he will attend school next year or what his major will be. “I’ve been accepted to a couple of different schools, but I haven’t decided yet.” Maybe his many happy detours at MHS have prepared him for the road ahead. As the saying goes: It feels good to be lost in the right direction.