From wedding planning to bringing water filters to Ecuador, Hawkeyes’ Logan Lee has eventful offseason

IOWA CITY — Two days before the Citrus Bowl, Noah Shannon was sitting in his bed in an Orlando hotel room, looking at his phone, when his roommate let him in on a secret.

“Hey, I’m going to do it today,” fellow Iowa defensive lineman Logan Lee told Shannon.

“It” was proposing to his girlfriend of five-plus years during the team’s stop at Universal Orlando Resort — one part of the Hawkeyes’ pre-bowl festivities leading up to the Jan. 1 game.

“It was very nerve-racking,” Lee said. “Obviously I’ve never done anything like that before.”

Most importantly, she said yes.

“We've been talking about getting married for a while,” Lee said. “We were ready for it.”

By the time Lee bent one knee along the water at Universal’s CityWalk section of its Orlando theme park, it wasn’t much of a secret anymore.

Her family knew. His family knew. Many of his teammates knew.

“Everybody knew other than her,” Lee said, “so it’s pretty impressive that we were able to keep that under wraps.”

As he popped the question, many of his teammates, including defensive end Joe Evans, lingered about 30 yards behind the soon-to-be-engaged couple.

“We were trying to hide so she wouldn’t see us and ruin the surprise,” Evans said.

Lee would’ve had more people there, but Shannon couldn’t find the couple and was on the Jurassic World VelociCoaster at the time of the proposal. Cornerback Riley Moss didn’t know where it was happening either.

The “jittery” Evans might’ve been even more nervous about it than Lee was.

“Dude, I feel like I’m about to propose,” Evans told the other teammates trying to inconspicuously follow Lee. “I’m all nervous for him.”

Lee had some help. The team videographers captured the moment. Ahead of time, one of the trainers picked the ideal spot to pop the question.

“She was like, ‘Hey, I think this would be a good spot,’” Lee said. “She was just there like a couple months ago.”

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Lee will get married July 3 with a destination wedding reception a year later. Moss already is angling for an invitation.

“Apparently they’re going to have their wedding in like the Caribbean or somewhere crazy,” Moss said. “So hopefully I get invited to that because I definitely want to go.”

When Lee hasn’t been training for football or preparing for the wedding, he also worked with Iowa’s Athletes in Action chapter — a faith-based group of Hawkeye athletes — to take a service trip to Ecuador.

Lee and more than a dozen other athletes distributed water filters, and their Christian message, to 86 families without access to clean water.

“In the villages, they had running water, but it was like muddy, muddy water,” Lee said. “Many of the people just drank straight from it.”

Others used bleach, a sock or boiling to clean the “dark, dark brown” water. Now they have filters that can last a decade and filter about 1,000 liters of water per day — roughly enough water to fill three bath tubs.

Other football players included Monte Pottebaum, Desmond Hutson and Kyler Fisher. While Hutson transferred to Northern Iowa in the offseason, he still traveled with his former teammates.

Along with the water needs, 33 or 34 people “accepted Christ into their life” during the trip, Lee said.

When they left Ecuador, there were “a lot of tears shed that day.”

“It really, really touched me how much we impacted them,” Lee said.

Between the trip and the proposal, those touching moments have seemed rather frequent for the sophomore defensive lineman.

“I had a lot going on,” Lee said. “Life’s great.”

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