The three-sport star at South Hamilton prior to his graduation in 2019 announced last month that he has decided to transfer from Simpson College in Indianola to Northwestern College in Orange City.

Peters, who attempted to compete in three sports — cross country, basketball and track and field — at the collegiate level, will finish up his freshman classroom work at Simpson later this month and will enroll at Northwestern College in the fall.

“It just wasn’t the right fit for me,” Peters said when asked about his decision to leave Simpson. “Northwestern recruited me before I went to Simpson, so I reached out to them to see what they were thinking and I talked to the coaches after I got released and they said they were excited about the possibility of me transferring.”

The 2018 Daily Freeman-Journal Male Athlete of the Year, Peters admits now that being a multiple-sport athlete in college is a demanding task, far more so than at the prep level.

Logan Peters celebrates as he crosses the finish line in the Class 2A 1,600-meter run at the 2018 state track and field meet in Des Moines. Peters won the state crown, and a year later was a part of the Hawks’ state championship 4x800-meter relay. He’ll continue to run track at Northwestern College in Orange City in 2021. DFJ file photo

“At first I thought it was going to be OK, but then (at Simpson last fall) we started getting into more basketball workouts while cross country was going on and it was tough,” Peters said. “I’d have a cross country workout at 6:30 in the morning, I’d come back and go to class, then I’d have a basketball workout followed by open gym. It was something that I wanted to try, but at the end of the day it’s tough to do.”

Peters will continue to attempt to compete in two sports — basketball and track and field (outdoor) — at Northwestern. Basketball will preclude him from competing in track and field during the indoor season.

Under the NAIA umbrella, Northwestern College is one of four Iowa schools that competes in the Great Plains Athletic Conference. The league is comprised of 12 institutions from Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota.

Morningside and Briar Cliff are also members of the GPAC, which could give Peters the chance to play against former South Hamilton teammates Conner Hill and Marco Balderas on the hardwood. Hill, a classmate of Peters’ at SHHS, is a member of the Morningside men’s basketball team, while Balderas, a 2018 high school grad, plays at Briar Cliff.

“That’s going to be fun and I’ve talked to Conner about it a little bit,” Peters said. “It will be weird a little at first, but the competitors in us will come out.”

On the track, Peters says he’ll transition more to middle distance events, particularly 400 and 800 meters.

At South Hamilton, Peters was a four-year varsity contributor and qualified for a combined 11 state tournaments and meets — four in cross country and track, and three in basketball.

Peters won a pair of state track titles; he captured the Class 2A 1,600-meter gold medal as a junior in 2018, and then led-off the Hawks’ victorious 2A 4×800 relay in 2019. He was also third in the 800 twice, sixth in the two-mile as a junior and eighth in the mile as a freshman.

He owns the South Hamilton school records in the 800, 1,600 and 3,200.

Peters was an all-state cross country runner in the fall of 2017 following a seventh-place finish (2A) at the state meet. He placed 16th (1A) as a senior in 2018 and helped South Hamilton place third as a team, its highest finish in nearly 30 years.

Peters was a 2A third-team all-state basketball player following the 2018-19 season, a campaign in which he averaged 14.2 points and 4.5 rebounds per game. South Hamilton reached the state tournament for the third time in four years and placed third.