Though he hasn’t been able to play football this fall, Chilliwack’s Logan Buchwitz has still secured a commitment to a post-secondary spot.
The teenager will be heading to Simon Fraser University when he’s done at G.W. Graham secondary school, joining the one program in Canada that is attached to the NCAA.
“The NCAA factor wasn’t too much of a factor,” Buchwitz said. “I went more off of what appealed to me and where I could see a future at. The factor of the school being NCAA was just a nice added bonus.”
Regarded as the best high school talent in B.C., Buchwitz was on the radar of several programs. Despite not being able to put anything fresh on tape because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Buchwitz did more than enough in previous seasons to get noticed.
A provincial champion with Chilliwack Minor Football Association’s bantam Giants in 2017, and champion with G.W. Graham’s AA junior varsity team in 2018, he comes from a winning background.
He also has lots of experience with Team B.C. and Team Canada programs, and he’s played seven-on-seven ball in Washington State.
With great size and athleticism, he’s the type of projectable kid next-level coaches look for.
“I was being recruited by a variety of other schools but the main other school I was considering was the (University of) Calgary Dinos,” he said. “Calgary has a great program and some amazing coaches so they definitely were a top contender for me.
“But I chose SFU because of the football program, the coaches and the type of offence they run. Everything that they presented to me was appealing and it seemed like a good fit.”
Simon Fraser plays in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, an NCAA Div II group that includes Alaska-Fairbanks, Alaska-Anchorage, Central Washington, Western Washington, Montana State-Billings, Northwest Nazarene, Saint Martin’s, Seattle Pacific and Western Oregon.
SFU joined the GWAC in 2019 and have struggled on the field, posting a 12-68 record within the conference.
They were 1-5 in 2019 and 0-29 from 2015-18.
“The recent history of SFU didn’t really concern me,” Buchwitz said. “They stated that they were making a change, and as long as they were taking action it was good enough for me.”
Despite its recent struggles, Simon Fraser does have a long and successful history that has seen more SFU players drafted by Canadian Football League teams than any other since 1965. That includes 34 first rounders and five players taken first overall.
Chilliwack football legend Rick Klassen was a proud Simon Fraser alum, and Buchwitz would love to follow in those big footsteps.
For the moment, he’s just excited to have a future football home.
“I am pretty excited to be done with the recruiting process,” he said. “As good a learning experience as it was, it was sometimes stressful. But it’s definitely worth it.
“I am happy to be able to just focus on training and school and have that out of the way now.”
l You’ll probably have noticed this article went by without a single mention of SFU’s team name.
For decades, Simon Fraser went by the moniker ‘Clansmen,’ but the school dropped that in August.
While it was supposed to be a reference to the Scottish background of the man SFU is named after, it was too often associated with the Ku Klux Klan. Calls to change the name intensified after 2017 when the school joined the Great Northwest Athletic Conference and started facing American foes.
A new name has not been finalized.
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