A Basketball Super League title run in the spring / summer of 2025 pretty much cemented the very special place in the hearts of Sudbury sports fans that coach Logan Stutz and the Sudbury Five will forever hold.

To be frank, however, the native of Kansas City had already ensured that legacy in the weeks and months and years preceding the championship run, just simply being the man that he is.

Recently named as Athletic Director of the Spurgeon College Knights, right in his hometown, Stutz took time to share his thoughts on both his time, and bond, with the northern Ontario city that truly became his home away from home - beginning by addressing the rumours of his departure being linked to any kind of a falling out with SWSE team with whom he launched his professional basketball coaching career.

“I’ve got a great relationship with Dario (Zulich),” said Stutz. “I think he has done great things for that city - and I pray that he continues to do them.”

To know Logan Stutz, even a little, is to understand that there will always be two things on his list of life priorities that supersede his career: faith and family. Not all that surprising is the fact that one of the two was paramount to his return to the U.S. midwest - with the other soon coming into play in a big way as he secured his new job.

(Spurgeon College sits on the campus of the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary)

“A lot of things got heavy with me last summer, with my family and missing out and missing home.” Stutz explained. “It just got to the point where I didn’t feel that I could give the Sudbury Five my best any more. The players deserve someone who is going to give it their best every day.”

“Moving back home and getting my family back around their grandparents, my brother, their uncle, their cousins just made more sense for me and my family.”

While the official announcement of his return home was not all that far removed from the start of the 2025-2026 BSL season, Stutz noted that the wheels for the transition had been set in motion much, much earlier.

“A lot of things were in play and we wanted to make sure that we left the players, the coaches, the management in the best possible place,” said Stutz.

In so many ways, Stutz would acknowledge that Sudbury was absolutely the best place for him and his family to spend the past five years or so, split between two different stints. “My development from a personal and coaching standpoint was just so positive,” he noted. “I have always been someone who strives to hold myself to a high standard, but there are so many people who can sharpen you.”

“I’m so thankful for the people I met in the organization, for the people I met in the city,” added Stutz. “That’s sometimes hard to find, nowadays, people who will mentor you, people who will take you under their wings and care for you.”

For as much as Logan Stutz entered the role with a vision of just what might be, he simply never anticipated that so many elements of that pathway to success were already part of the very fabric of his new community.

“The welcome that the team and myself and my family received was such a reflection of the people in Sudbury - and their willingness to be open to something new,” Stutz explained. “I had a community-drive concept coming in, but the people in Sudbury really beat me to the punch - which was really cool.”

“The visions aligned and made for the perfect formula, on and off the basketball court.”

The basketball memories are many, highlighted by the championship playoff run. And yet so many of the moments that will never leave have nothing to do with the sport invented by a Canadian (Dr James Naismith).

“I love the drive on the 400 from Toronto to Sudbury,” said Stutz. “I love the trees - and if you drive it on a summer evening, you get a beautiful sunset. To me, that was just kind of therapeutic. You can meditate and enjoy the drive.”

And when the snow-cover came, Stutz and family could appreciate that too. “I had always told myself that I wanted to live in Alaska. Sudbury is not quite that far, but it is about as wintery as you can get. My kids already miss that.”

Year-round, the very raison d’etre of the home of the Big Nickel is awfully hard to ignore.

“There are not too many communities where you can find a major industry where pretty much everybody is linked to the mines in some way,” said Stutz, who closed off his list with a choice that would make countless Sudburians proud to call him one of our own.

“Porketta bingo,” beamed Stutz. “If you haven’t done it, you’ve got to do it.”

The things that Logan Stutz holds dear speak volumes. He clearly loves to coach - but requires a balance. “The coaching life is very demanding: a lot of weekends on the roads, a lot of hours before and after practice and games. Your family, during the season, in many ways is your team, your players.”

“While I loved my time with the team, I wanted to make family more of a priority.”

And so he moves on, knowing a small part of him is left behind.

“We loved our time in Sudbury,” said Stutz. “To some extent, we grew up there. My kids will know Sudbury as their hometown - and that’s really cool to me. It’s a place that I know will never turn its back on me - and I will never turn my back on Sudbury.”

“We will definitely be back.”