MaxPreps Weekly Honor Roll, presented by the United States Marine Corps: Jace Logan, Soroco

It was an eerie feeling of déjà vu for Jace Logan.

For the third straight year, the Soroco (Oak Creek, Colo.) wrestler advanced to the state title match at the Pepsi Center in Denver. However, for the third straight year, he went home a little salty after a runner-up finish.

"It's still a big accomplishment," Logan said. "But I always strive for first place, so it's also disappointing. You always want to be No. 1."

"You've got to beat the best to be the best," Soroco wrestling coach Jay Whaley said. "That's his theory in life."

Logan, who wrestling at 170 in Class 2A, had pins in all three of his matches leading up to the championship match on Feb. 17. However, Logan couldn't solve Wray's Carlos Tarin, who scored a pin in 5:28.

"He was really depressed," Whaley said. "He thought he had a good shot at winning. That's why we wrestle, he had a tough kid. It haunts him. He takes it really hard, so we have to kind of build him back up again."

Logan, who finished with a 29-3 record, couldn't quite get over the hump, falling one step short of his ultimate goal. Again.

"I think a lot of it's mental in the finals," Logan said. "I feel like I work hard. I put in the extra work in the offseason and extra conditioning in practice, but I think it's a mental thing in the finals. I need to dig deep and really find myself. I've just got to figure out how to get over it."

Logan's coach knows his wrestler has mental toughness, it's just solving that final match of the season.

Learn More: Semper Fidelis Athlete of the Month presented by the Marines

"It gives me a lot of motivation to work harder and harder," Logan said.

Logan has had a phenomenal career thus far at Soroco with an overall record of 115-15. Nine of those losses came as a freshman when Logan was starting to figure out the key to wrestling at the varsity level. As a seventh- and eighth-grader, Logan went undefeated and carried a solid mat reputation into high school. However, even though he was an accomplished wrestler, he was overlooked in his first season at 145. He snuck into the championship match before falling to Paonia's Bo Pipher, who is now wrestling at Penn State.

Logan didn't creep up on anyone as a sophomore, finishing second in the state at 152.

One big reason Logan's been so successful on the mat is because he's extremely driven.

"He is goal-orientated," Whaley said. "He doesn't like losing.

"He's from a hard-working ranch family. The real true values in life and hard work. He's just an amazing kid and has some athleticism on top of it."

He's also a student of the sport. He'll study moves and pick up pointers from some of the best wrestlers throughout the country.

"He'll come into the wrestling room and say, ‘Hey, I saw this on YouTube. What do you think?' " Whaley said. "Instead of playing video games and that stuff at night, he's studying how to make himself better the next day. He's just an amazing kid that way."

It's amazing how solid an athlete Logan is on the wrestling mat. But what's even more astounding is his prowess on the football field. Last fall, he rushed for 3,230 yards, which was tops in Colorado and fifth in the nation. He averaged 269.2 yards per game, 13.3 yards per carry, in helping Soroco reach the 8-man state semifinals.

"It's a lot of hard work and I had a really good line this year," Logan said. "They made big holes. I just had to run fast, I guess."

Logan also scored a remarkable 47 touchdowns as a junior — 43 came on the ground.

"It's always been a goal of mine to score as many touchdowns as my jersey number (44)," Logan said. "I would have never thought I'd get 44, it just happened this year."

He rushed for five 300-plus-yard games, including a 446-yard, five-touchdown performance as well as a 430-yard and six-touchdown game.

"It's really rewarding to run that much or score six touchdowns," Logan said. "But the big picture as a team, you've got to do whatever you've got to do to win. I treat it as everybody's touchdowns and everybody's yards."

Defensively, Logan amassed 156 tackles a season ago, 117 solo, from his linebacker position.

The 17-year-old will get the opportunity of a lifetime when he suits up for a junior All-American football game in Las Vegas at the end of March. It will mark the first time he gets to play 11-man football in his career.

"It's pretty special because only 100 applicants are selected, so to be one of the 100 out of the whole nation, that's a pretty big honor," Logan said.

Logan is hoping to showcase his talents on the big stage and attraction some national attention from coaches. He'd like to play college football, but some programs might shy away from a kid who plays the 8-man game. Logan has received interest from Division II and III schools, but he's striving to play D-I.

When Logan isn't in football and wrestling, he's big into rodeo competitions. Living on a nearly 20,000-acre ranch, Logan and his brothers are out practicing every day in the summer in their family's on-site arena.

Last June, Logan won the Colorado State High School Rodeo Association title in steer wrestling. One month later, Logan took 12th in high school nationals in Gillette, Wyo.

It's can be a grind juggling football and rodeo — which runs in the fall and spring — during the fall season.

"A lot of times I'll play a football game on Friday night and then drive to a rodeo and compete on Saturday and Sunday," said Logan, who has qualified for nationals the last four years. "It takes a lot of toll on the body having to play a football game and then having to be all sore and drive how long to a rodeo."

Logan is also an excellent student, sporting a 3.79 grade point average. He's in his second year on the National Honor Society and is a part of Future Farmers of America (FFA). Through FFA, Logan is able to log plenty of community service hours, helping with benefit dinners for families in need and fundraising events for his school.

"I always like to give back to the community," Logan said. "It's pretty small, so everybody knows everybody, so there's a lot of support and a lot of friends."

Whaley, who has Logan in class, calls Logan a great student and classmate.

"He's really humble, and that's what I appreciate about him, too," Whaley said. "He'll help everybody. It doesn't matter who you are, he'll help you."

A perfectionist in the classroom as well as in athletics, Logan is going to continue working hard to achieve his goal of becoming a state champion wrestler. It will drive him until the day he returns for the state title match.

"You think about it every day what you could have done different," Logan said. "Hindsight's always 20/20. You're just always thinking about what you can do and how you can improve for the next time."

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