NORTH BEND, Wash. — Ben Tomlinson has been a soccer coach at Mount Si for 20 years. He has also coached in England and Japan. 

Tomlinson believes senior Logan Aiken is one of the best goalkeepers he's worked with. 

"In this day and age, where you've got to have a goalkeeper that can play from the back and play with his feet as well as save if he's the perfect sort of modern goalkeeper for us," Tomlinson said.

In soccer, the captaincy often goes to midfielders or defenders, but at Mount Si, Aiken is one of the Wildcats' captains.

"Logan's our leader to start with, you know, he brings so much energy on the field," Tomlinson said. "He's the last person to leave at practice. He's picking up pennies. He's picking up cones. He really leads by example."

Quick and strong feet were not words that described Aiken at a young age.

"It was a very hard battle," said Shanonn Aiken, his mother. "So, we knew when I was pregnant with Logan, in the ultrasound, they said, 'Oh, there's a little problem. He has club feet.' We didn't know the extent of the club feet."

Clubfoot is a congenital or acquired defect where one or both feet are rotated inward and downward.

"Before Logan was born, I actually went to Seattle Children's Hospital with the pictures from the ultrasound and I said, 'Here's what my kid has," Shanonn Aiken said. "He has club feet.' What can we do?"

Six days after birth, they started casting Logan Aiken's feet. 

"He would go in every week and they would slowly turn his feet out and they would cast it each week and they did that for a couple months and then after that," Shanonn Aiken said. 

"I had surgery on both of my feet," Logan Aiken said. "They cut the Achilles and removed some bones. 

"Then after that, it was just, he had to wear these special shoes with the bar all the time, like pretty much 23 hours a day," Shanonn Aiken said. "It was hard and he would get frustrated sometimes."

Logan Aiken spent his preschool years in a wheelchair, but when the wheelchair went away, it took him some time to adjust.

"Wheelchair is going away, you have to learn to walk again," said Michael Aiken, his father. "So, you know, through adversity, he didn't want to walk for a long time. He just would crawl around with his arms and drag his legs and then eventually he just started to walk. That's kind of hard to see, you want your kids to play whatever sport they want."

"So when Logan was young, the doctor had a conversation with us about, you know, eventually he might want to do sports," Shannon Aiken said. "So the doctor mentioned, you don't want to set him up for failure, so you want to put him in a sport for where he would succeed. But he did mention, so obviously you wouldn't want to put him in soccer."

"I've always wanted to do whatever I can, so someone tells me I'm not going to do something, I want to go out there and do it," Logan Aiken said. 

So Logan Aiken tried out for soccer and made a club team. 

"From there on, he just decided that's what he wanted to do was be a goalkeeper," Shannon Aiken said. 

Logan Aiken never liked to share that he had club feet, and it was not easy playing through pain. 

"I would tell him, is this worth it?" Michael Aiken said. "Do you really want to do this, a lot pain?" 

"It was a battle," Shannon Aiken said. "He's tough. I've always said he's a very tough. He rarely complains that he's in pain."

"It was hard, especially at the start," Logan Aiken said. "I'd have to come home and ice my feet every day. I'd have to stretch a lot extra, wear ankle wraps, and it was hard to start. (But) it all worked out."

That pain would turn to joy on May 25, 2024. 

"I did not sleep much the night before," Shanonn Aiken said. "I was a mess. I was very stressed out."

Mount Si faced off against Camas for a state championship, Logan Aiken was the starting goalie. He was brilliant in goal and Mount Si won 3-1.

"It was something indescribable," Logan Aiken said. "It was, it was a lot of fun, great, great group of seniors last year and (a) great way to send them off."

It was Mount Si's first-ever boys soccer championship.

"Everyone always talks about leaving a legacy, and that's, it's cool that I can say I'm leaving something here at Mount Si," Logan Aiken said. "It's awesome."

Maybe there's no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow, but there is a young man who showed anything is possible. 

"I'd say don't let stereotypes shape where you can go," Logan Aiken said. "You can go anywhere where you want to as long as you work for it and you understand what it's going to take."

Logan Aiken also wrestled his freshman year at Mount Si and currently has a 3.97 GPA. Next year, he will attend Ole Miss.