Chapter 2 - Logan
Logan Lowery didn’t sprout a hair on her head until she was nearly five months old. Not even peach fuzz. Which didn’t do a thing to wipe the smile from her face. If ever a baby was happier than Logan Lowery, there’s no record of it. She slept through the night for the first time when she was just five weeks old, and on the rare occasion she did find reason to cry, it was a small, sweet sound. The nurses told the Lowerys Logan had “a pretty cry.”
When her hair finally arrived, it seemed to be making up for lost time. The blonde curls piled up overnight, and no matter how they were styled, wrapped, or tied, they had a mind of their own and spilled into Logan’s face, causing her squeals of delight.
She decided at just a day past eight months old that crawling wasn’t getting her where she needed to be quickly enough. So she pulled herself up and began to cruise along the sectional and around the ottoman in the Lowery living room. After a week of that, she figured it was time to walk.
Chuck Lowery’s heart broke with every split lip, black eye, and bruised cheek, but Logan’s reach far exceeded her grasp and she spent a month falling down more than she walked. No matter how terrible the tumble, however, she gritted her teeth (well, gums, mostly) and got right back up to try again. Stumbling became walking, then running and climbing, but no matter what toy was put in front of her, she always looked for a ball.
Daddy may not have gotten the boy he’d planned for, but there wasn’t a boy for a hundred miles, or up to a year older than Logan, who could keep up with her.
She grew quickly, but never lost her coordination. By the time Chuck and Tracy signed her up for basketball and tee ball, even the parents of boys she played against demanded to see her birth certificate.
“She can’t possibly be five years old!” they insisted.
But she was. She’d simply inherited the athletic genes of both her parents and had a ready supply of bats and balls of all sizes. And she did what Lowerys had always done on the diamond and court; she dominated.
Schoolwork didn’t come quite so easily, despite having two parents who were educators. Logan was just too full of energy to sit still long enough to pay attention. Each day was a sprint, from the moment she woke up in the morning to whenever she collapsed at night, usually downstairs on the couch, from which Daddy would inevitably carry her up to bed.
She became the stereotypical tomboy, eschewing dolls and pretty things for bumps and scrapes, dirt and sweat.
At eight years old she noticed some kids kicking a soccer ball as she left a softball game (she’d hit two home runs) and she asked her parents if she could play that as well.
Soccer was one sport neither Tracy nor Chuck had played, and their knowledge beyond “you can’t use your hands” was limited. But they found the local league and signed her up, and the whirlwind of blonde curls that was Logan Lowery had discovered her passion. Basketball was a game of stops and starts, and softball only allowed for a handful of trips to the plate each game and even when she pitched there just wasn’t enough action for her.
Soccer, on the other hand, let her run, run, and run some more. Her coach quickly discovered that she was tireless and aggressive almost to a fault. He placed her at center midfield and told her she could go anywhere she wanted, as long as she was helping the team.
The cries for a birth certificate resumed as a new set of parents watched their daughters wilt under the intensity of Logan’s relentless pressure. Tracy had a copy laminated and carried it with her to all of her daughter’s games.
Although Logan still played softball and basketball, she really only made the concession to appease her parents. She knew quitting basketball would hurt her mother and giving up softball would devastate her father. The Olympic softball dream was something with which she was all too familiar, and her dad made sure she didn’t miss a pitch when the United States team was playing.
Her waning interest in sports other than soccer didn’t translate, however, to diminished success in those endeavors.
By the time high school rolled around, a ninth grade Logan was the finest all-around athlete at Montgomery High, regardless of gender or age. Her early growth spurt ended during middle school, and although 5’9” was still tall, it wasn’t freakish. She filled out into a mature athlete’s body, and although some guys were intimidated by her musculature, her ready smile, happy blue eyes, and blonde curls left her with no shortage of suitors. She went out with groups of friends, but there never seemed to be time for one boy or for any sort of relationship to develop.
Logan’s sophomore year was when all her father’s hard work paid dividends. After helping Montgomery High’s soccer team attain the best record in school history, and the basketball team to within four points of the state tournament, her buzz-saw pitching and powerful bat helped fill the hole in her school’s trophy case that Chuck Lowery had urged the athletic director to make room for way back when. A state championship on her resume brought recruiters out in droves, and the dream (if not Logan’s, then definitely Chuck’s) was blossoming nicely.
* * *
Until the morning that summer when the family gathered for breakfast, divvying up the Dayton Daily News over waffles and scrambled eggs.
“That’s bullshit!” exclaimed Chuck, dropping his coffee mug to the table like a gavel, surprising his daughter and wife, who threw him a disapproving glare.
“Sorry, honey. I just… you won’t believe what it says here. Baseball and softball are getting dropped by the Olympics! Starting in 2012, they won’t be in the Olympics anymore. I think I’m gonna be sick.”
With that, Chuck Lowery rose, head slung low in defeat, and stumbled off toward the stairs and back to his bedroom.
Logan and her mother looked at one another in shock.
“That can’t be right,” her mother said, walking over to the pick up the newspaper Chuck had thrown on the floor. “How can the Olympics get rid of softball? It’s one of the most popular sports played…”
But Chuck was right. According to the newspaper, the internet, and ESPN, his worst nightmare had come true.
No more softball. Which meant no more Olympic dreams for either Logan or her father.