Bound for the NWC

Robert Husseman/News-Register##McMinnville senior Elizabeth Logsdon, a four-year, three-sport athlete, will play basketball for Willamette University in Salem next winter.

Elizabeth Logsdon has achieved “something I’ve had a goal of my whole life.”
“I wanted to work hard to play basketball in college,” the McMinnville High School senior said Wednesday.
Logsdon will get her chance, in the Northwest Conference. The 6-foot forward will matriculate to Willamette University to play for the Bearcats.
Logsdon received second-team honors in the Class 6A Greater Valley Conference her junior and senior seasons. She helped the Grizzlies to a fifth-place finish in the conference (15-11, 8-8 GVC) and a berth into the OSAA Class 6A state playoffs. McMinnville fell to Oregon City in the 6A state first round.
Logsdon visited Willamette’s campus in Salem in January, meeting with head coach Peg Swadener and her staff.
“In the beginning I wasn’t quite sure, just because the school was so expensive. I went and visited and I just knew,” Logsdon said. “It was like, I love this college. I like the atmosphere. And I like the coaches, too.”
The visit included an open gym session with members of the team. (Willamina High School graduate Whitney Anderson will be a junior for the Wildcats this coming winter.) That helped seal Logsdon’s decision: “After that, I told my mom, ‘I gotta do it. This is the place for me.’”
Swadener helped sell Logsdon on an on-court role similar to that which she performed for the Grizzlies: as a perimeter-oriented player with the size to back down smaller wings as needed.
“She wanted to use my athleticism, is what she really talked about. Basically, just go to the hole, rip and just do whatever I could to get points,” Logsdon said. “She wanted to use me more on the baseline, and that’s kind of more of a wing.”
Logsdon was one of four Mac High student-athletes honored at the McMinnville High School Sports Hall of Fame banquet May 14 as a four-year, three-sport athlete. She also competed in volleyball, where she was a second-team all-GVC middle blocker in 2015, and track and field, where she qualified for the OSAA Class 6A State Track and Field Championships as a member of the Grizzlies’ 4x400-meter relay team in 2015.