LUCAS KNOWLES
LOGAN KNOWLES
By Terry Mosher
Editor, Sports Paper
We probably should not have expected less from Logan and Lucas Knowles once their backgrounds were considered. Both are very athletic and come from athletic extended families, so Logan becoming a starter in baseball at the Naval Academy as a first-year plebe and younger brother Lucas being a key cog on a state high school baseball champion team makes perfect sense.
Just being born into an athletic atmosphere doesn’t guarantee athletic success, but it certainly helps. Mother Jennifer, whose maiden name was Logan, was an all-state volleyball and softball player at North Mason High School and her older brothers Joe and Alex made All-American at the University of Puget Sound in football (Joe) and made all-state in baseball at North Mason (Alex).
And dad Mark Knowles was an all-state golfer out of North Mason who rode his golf clubs to a scholarship at Washington State and to an excellent career as a golfer (he now is the head golf pro at Gold Mountain Golf Complex).
So the athletic genes were already in place, and the rest of it – the passion for sports – was there also from the family. Backyard games of basketball were intense and very competitive among the family, and that competitiveness extended to games of Ping Pong and to the golf course where both Lucas and Logan are pretty good with the sticks.
In short, both Logan and Lucas, a senior-to-be at South Kitsap, could have practically named the sport they would have liked to focus on and had become good enough to gather in a college scholarship. Logan played football and basketball in addition to baseball at SK, and was an excellent quarterback who switched in high school to wide receiver and became a sure-handed and quick catcher of footballs to earn honors on the All-Narrows League team (he also got similar honors in the league for baseball).
Logan played on two straight SK teams that made the state championship game. He pitched and played the outfield when not pitching and was important to SK’s success his junior and senior years.
That success along with academic success combined to get him a nomination to the Naval Academy where his past season he settled in as a starter for the Midshipmen at third base, an uncommon feat for a first-year player. But then Logan is an uncommon athlete and leader.
Lucas pitched this past season for state champion SK. He was the starting pitcher in the championship game against Newport (a 5-2 SK win), but had to come out after two out in the fourth inning when he felt something give in his left-arm (he’s a lefty). He’s been shut down since, and a recent MRI did not reveal a tear so plenty of rest before starting a rehab program should have him back on track to have an excellent senior season.
As it is, Lucas is being targeted by Pac-10 schools. Washington and Washington State have prime interest in the six-foot-one Lucas, and Oregon and Oregon State are beginning to look at him. The rest of the Pac-10 will likely follow suit.
A 77 Lucas shot the other day at Gold Mountain tells us he is already back on track. But he and Logan have not aligned themselves with their dad’s career in the golf business, even if they knock the little white ball around pretty good.
Enrolling in a military academy is not the easiest thing. We have had others in West Sound try it and not finish. And it wasn’t easy at the beginning for Logan
“School was challenging, the whole environment was challenging,” says Mark Knowles of Logan. “Probably after a week of hating it, he got over the shock and awe of it and absolutely loves the whole thing. He’s really looking forward to finishing his college there and going on to flight school after that.”
After just being home for several weeks after the Middies lost in the championship game of the Patriot League Tournament to Lehigh, preventing them from going to the NCAA tournament, Logan flew back to Annapolis to rest before heading out to Australia to catch up with the aircraft carrier George Washington where until mid-July he will get acquainted with life on a carrier as part of his Navy training.
Lucas finished his junior year at SK with a 7-1 record and an ERA of 1.30. He started out as a groundball pitcher, but finished as a strikeout pitcher with a fastball clocked in the high 80s. In the quarterfinal state game against Skyview he threw four innings with nine strikeouts and no walks.
There is hope that Lucas will grow another inch in height and with a year of maturity might be gunning his fastball in the low 90s next season.
An interesting statistic about the two boys is that in three state championship games they have combined for 14 innings of pitching and have given up just one earned run.
Before we go further, we need to add there is a third Knowles – younger sister Eva who will be a junior this fall at South Kitsap. Eva has found her sport – cross county (and track and field). She just missed by seconds of qualifying this past fall for the state cross country meet.
Mark Knowles played baseball until he was about 14 when he was given an ultimatum by his mother, choose baseball or golf. His mother was tiring out from driving him to both and she wanted some relief. So Mark choose golf, and that appears to have been a good choice, although who knows how far he might have gone in baseball.
When we caught up with Logan, he was resting from a red-eye flight from Sea-Tac to Annapolis.
“Zero dark 30,” Logan said as he shook the cobwebs from his head. “It was an all-night flight.”
Once we stopped talking, Logan said he was headed over to the baseball complex to get in some swings. He hit just .183 this past season as the Middies won the Patriot League regular season (13-7) to finish 37-20 on the year. He started out hitting over .300, but endured some changes in batting mechanics ordered by head coach Paul Kostacopoulos and the change took a lot to get used to and his batting average pummeled as he adjusted.
Logan really likes hitting coach Jeff Zane, however, and it is hoped that a change back to his regular stance might get him some relief from being around the Mendoza line (.200) next season.
He started on the bench to begin the season, which is not unusual for a plebe, but a third of the way into the season Sean Trent was moved to left field and Logan took his place at third and stayed there for the rest of the season. He committed seven errors at the hot corner and had a .929 fielding percentage.
Although Logan and Lucas are similar in size (both are about six-foot-one), there are differences in the two. Logan is more calculating when it comes to competition and Lucas is more to try to overwhelm the competition with brute force.
“I was fortunate to have him in high school, not only in class but to be able to coach him two years,” says third-year SK coach Marcus Logue of Logan. “He is one of the hardest working human beings I ever met. What is so special about him is that he is so kind and respectful of all kinds of life, and not only on the baseball field and classroom but everywhere.
“I will never coach probably another student athlete like him. What is more important is that how impressive he is on the diamond he is even better as a human being.”
What is impressive about Logan and the life in at the Naval Academy is that he quickly adapted to that kind of life with open arms after that initial first week. He cherishes his time with the academy and is anxious to learn as much as possible, and to work as hard as possible to gain success.
Logan made the choice even before he got his Navy appointment that he wanted to be a fighter jet pilot. Thus, he will go to flight school in Florida once he graduates from the academy and train to be one.
As good of a baseball player that he is, there is only a slim chance to play pro ball. Unless a Navy player is drafted extremely high – say first to third rounds – it is highly unlikely the Navy would allow him to be exempt from the five years of military service required of academy graduates.
So becoming a Navy pilot is probably going to be it for Logan.
Lucas, on the other hand, has no desire to follow his brother into a military academy and is looking forward to having a good senior season and gaining a full-ride scholarship to play at a NCAA D-1 school. He has already visited Washington, and was impressed with the facilities and the coaching staff.
“I went for a visit a couple weeks ago,” says Lucas. “The campus is really nice and the athletic facilities are excellent. It’s a really cool school. The coaching staff is great. I like their pitching coach, Jason Kelly. He is really great. We just kind of had a 15-minute conversation, but he is on top of it.”
“I just love baseball,” says Lucas, who several days ago played 27 holes of golf at Gold Mountain that tested his injured arm.
Of his competitive spirit, Lucas says, “I always want to win more than the other guy. “I can remember as soon as my dad put in a basketball hoop at our old house, Logan and I would go at it. We would go back and forth. I spent my whole life trying to outdo him. We have been competing in everything, golf, baseball, basketball, Ping Pong. Logan is usually better than me in Ping Pong ‑ he spanks me.”
Lucas says his best moment in the competition between brothers came this past winter when for the first time he beat Logan in basketball.
“It was the first time I dunked,” says Lucas. “It was a surreal moment. It’s the thing I’ve been waiting for three or four years.”
When Lucas is not playing a sport, you can find him at the nearest gym. Most every day he’s at SK early in the morning lifting weights, and before school days he’s there. It’s as much of his routine as sleeping and eating.
“Lucas is a different human being,” says Logue. “He will scratch and claw until he comes out successful. He’ll work on it and grind on it until he seizes it. He had a real special year. He came into his own and grew into maturity. “
Then Logue compared the two boys ‑ “Logan is more cerebral and Lucas is feisty.”
That reminds us that Lucas also plays basketball for SK. In fact, he’s looking forward to this next season because there is a core of four players who return that should make the Wolves pretty good. One of those core players is Lucas.
If a strong competitive spirit counts for anything, and it does, don’t count the Wolves out as long as Lucas is on the court or on the mound.
In the end, it’s just a Knowles being a Knowles and having an idea of the end result, which is to win no matter what sport.