CALEDONIA — As her parents, other relatives, teammates, boyfriend and friends looked on, Caledonia High School senior Sunny Logan made it official: She was committing to the nursing program at William Carey University.
Oh, yeah, and she’s going to play tennis there, too.
Maybe that’s not exactly the reason for a signing period, but Logan first and foremost wants to be a nurse, and she restricted her serious choices to schools with nursing programs and tennis teams.
“I looked into Jones, Southern Miss, Mississippi College,” Logan said. “Ultimately what I want to do at the end of this is to be a nurse, and those schools all had nursing. William Carey was the best option for me.”
“Mississippi only has five nursing programs you can get a BS in,” dad Colby Logan added. “Sunny wants to be a nurse, and to get a bachelors in nursing really limited her choices.”
Limited choices did not mean there were no good choices, and Sunny Logan is very happy with hers.
“It has one of the best nursing programs,” she said of William Carey. “Plus, they have a really nice facility, and the coaches are amazing. I just really loved what they have to offer.”
An NAIA school in Hattiesburg which enrolled a record 5,362 students for the fall trimester, William Carey competes in the Southern States Athletic Conference, which includes schools in Louisiana, Alabama and Georgia in addition to Mississippi. The Crusaders field nine sports for women, seven sports for men and coed archery.
Logan said she has been thinking about playing college tennis for most of her life, picking up the sport when she was 5 years old.
“I fell in love the second I started,” said Logan, who said her best attribute on the court is her forehand. “I liked that it was an individual sport. Everything that I did relies solely on me.
“It was a game that you constantly have new challenges. You can always improve something or get better at something.”
The one thing Logan cannot improve upon is her record. As a junior, she did not drop a game all season, winning each match 6-0, 6-0. That was the only way to improve on what she did previously, which was to win every match of her high school career.
But there is a fourth MHSAA Class 4A state championship to win. Sunny has three of them — the 2020 tournament was lost to the COVID-19 pandemic — and can match brother Hunter’s four titles in golf with another one this spring. Her brother is a junior on the golf team at Mississippi State.
Hunter also played tennis at Caledonia, and during his senior year of 2019, he was the No. 2 seed in the boys singles tournament while Sunny was the No. 1 seed among the girls. It’s a familiar role for her, although she was “only” the No. 3 seed when she won her first title as an eighth-grader.
Logan’s dominance has been so complete she admits to on occasion being bored when she takes the court for a high school match.
“Sometimes,” she said with a laugh. “I try to go into every match with a challenge or a new objective to work on during that match.”
Her toughest challenge came at a young age. Logan was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma when she was 10 and spent a year at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
“Sunny was very fortunate to win the match of a lifetime by beating cancer when she was young,” Colby Logan said. “She’s very strong and brave young lady.”
For challenges on the court, Logan has traveled throughout the Southeast to play in USTA events. Colby Logan said they have gone to Jackson, Birmingham and Nashville, among others, to compete, and, as of January, Sunny Logan was ranked No. 13 in Mississippi by the United States Tennis Association.
William Carey knows about rankings. The Crusaders were ranked in the NAIA Top 10 last year and competed in the national championships, receiving an at-large bid after reaching the Southern States Athletic Conference championship.
The Crusaders feature an international roster, with three players from Germany, two from Spain and others from France, Thailand, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
And now Steens, Mississippi.
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