AUSTIN, Texas — Logan Eggleston is one of the best players on one of the best college volleyball teams in the country.
The junior's burnt orange pride comes from the progress she’s made at the University of Texas, rather than any on-court achievements. The change that occurred on campus has made her more excited than ever to be a Longhorn.
"Over the last two years, I've never felt prouder to be here at this university," Eggleston said. “I’m just so blessed to be able to speak up and voice my opinions."
Eggleston spearheaded the movement to both educate and empathize with students on campus after the murder of George Floyd in Spring 2020.
“Getting involved is super important, because it shows us how big our platforms are and how much change that we actually can make," Eggleston said. "People are informed about so many things and just so much more open to have conversations and to be open to other people's experiences."
Eggleston is in her second year as president of the Texas Student Athlete Advisory Committee. She's used her position to encourage social change.
“The biggest thing was finding our voice," Eggleston said. "Then organizing what we wanted and then voicing it back to our administration about what we wanted."
One of the new ideas that came from those discussions was the Longhorns for Equity, Access and Diversity Initiative (LEAD). The program helps student-athletes work with nonprofit organizations who serve underprivileged communities.
“Our athletic department is so diverse. We come from those communities, and it's time for us to use our platforms to give back to those people," Eggleston said. "We’re also the ones who get to read all of the applications and make the decisions of who gets money and how much money that they're given.”
The University of Texas athletic department has allocated $500,000 over the next five years to fund the LEAD initiative. The first organization to secure funding was Seedling, an Austin-based foundation that provides school-based mentoring to students with incarcerated parents.
"Logan has been driving this from Day 1," said LEAD Initiative director Milly Lopez. “She is like communicating with another super experienced staff member. It's her ability to organize and to really dig into the meat and bones of things and be analytic. Having her involved in it definitely brought some weight to the entire LEAD program.”
She’s a star on the court who's found her voice away from it. A leader who's using her platform to push for social change, a process that will continue long after Eggleston's time as a student-athlete finishes in Austin.
“The opportunities that I've gotten here and the way that I've been able to express myself through the work that I do, the things I say, wouldn't have been accepted other places,” Eggleston said. “You can't just say, 'flip the switch, everything's done, everything's perfect'. It's going to be a continuous thing. For the rest of my life, after my life, like there's always going to be work that needs to be done."