Logan Ziegenbusch rushed for 116 yards and two touchdowns…and threw for 137 yards (above) in last Friday’s 20-7 win over Coldwater. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Anna’s junior quarterback is finally ‘completely’ healthy, eager to make up for lost time, and committed to playing their best football when it matters the most.
Anna, OH – There’s more to Anna junior Logan Ziegenbusch – apart from playing quarterback – than just the shy smile and the floppy blonde hair. A lot more, in contemporary terms.
Sure, he’s a teenage athlete with skills and a competitive desire to win on Friday nights.
And yes, despite his protests about being the centerpiece to a talented and resurgent Rockets football team that’s suddenly fulfilling pre-season media expectations, he’s just that. One might call him the straw that stirs the drink. Or in this case, the motor that makes the Rockets soar.
At Press Pros we choose to call him the most dynamic offensive player in a conference full of dynamic offensive players!
“He’s a slippery dude,” Coldwater head coach Chip Otten acknowledged, following last week’s 20-7 Anna win on Otten’s home turf. And Coldwater doesn’t lose that many football games at home.
“He makes all kinds of runs and throws,” added Otten, once a slippery dude himself as a running back at Coldwater and Bowling Green State University. “And we couldn’t tackle him, even our best guys.”
What Ziegenbusch did last year as a skinny sophomore was enough to draw attention to the fact that along with a talented supporting cast of interior linemen and skill position players – TJ Roberts, Kale Hoying, Tyson Vaubel, and Brody Murray – Anna would be a serious challenger for the MAC title in 2026, and who knows what beyond. It’s high school football, and the strange and inexplicable can, and does, happen every year. All it takes, in many cases, is that one player to make the rocket soar.
Ziegenbusch tortured opposing defenses as a sophomore, with his decisiveness and ability to avoid contact as a scrambling quarterback. He reminded many of David Homan, a prototype to Ziegenbusch who just three years earlier had led New Bremen to its second state championship in 2022. Ziegenbusch had those same Homan qualities, only a better passer at a younger age.
“He’s really good,” Marion Local coach Tim Goodwin cautioned this past July, assessing the league’s competitive pecking order for 2026. “I mean, he’s a handful to defend, and we saw that last year.”
His reference was to a tipped Ziegenbusch pass in overtime that denied the Rockets an upset win over Marion Local…in double overtime!
Hence, with other impressive wins in 2025 against Coldwater, Northeastern and Mechanicburg, Ziegenbusch and the Rockets were anticipated as a team that could shake things up in 2026, all the way to the end of the Division VI playoffs.
It hasn’t turned out that way, not yet, with a Week 2 shocking loss to Fort Loramie, and subsequent blowout losses to St. Henry and Marion Local. At a critical of their season, the Rockets stood at just 2 wins (Spencerville and Parkway), and 3 losses.
“We just weren’t ready to compete in those games,” Ziegenbusch said of the losses to St. Henry and Marion, in a Press Pros column following their 41-14 loss at Marion Local. “We thought in the pre-season that we were better than we were, we got complacent, and we didn’t play to our potential.
“Don’t get me wrong, Marion Local and St. Henry are good football teams. But we have to execute better against teams like that, and we have a lot of football left to play.”
The part about there being more than the shy grin and the floppy hair? You don’t find that many underclassmen quarterbacks so willing to accept team responsibility for missed opportunity.
“We were playing hard,” added coach Nick Marino. “But we were just making too many mistakes. You can’t give up three touchdowns on fourth down, like we did against Marion Local. And we were a little beat up. But the big thing is that our kids are responding to the coaching, and they’re fightin’ against really good football teams. We’re going to get better.”
Little did others know that Ziegenbusch, himself, was playing a little beat up, nursing an ankle injury. But time is the great antidote, they say, healing all wounds. And Friday, during their 20-7 win at Coldwater, the Rockets’ quarterback demonstrated exactly what Division VI football has to look forward to come the post-season.
He ran for 116 yards and two touchdowns, threw for 137 yards, and literally iced the game with a minute left in the third quarter with his second touchdown run of the game. Afterwards, he demonstrated not only his competitiveness, but maturity beyond his years.
“I really didn’t feel like tonight was do or die,” he said about a win that bought the Rockets loads of playoff capital. “We knew we could come here and win. We just had to execute. We just have to do our job.”
And speaking of his own performance – of leading Coldwater tacklers on a merry chase throughout the game, he added: “I’m nothing without my big guys up front. I owe everything to them and they were terrific all night, on both sides of the ball.”
Unwilling to take credit for his own impact, he chose to defer to that of his teammates, which caused Nick Marino to share his own shy smile.
“It’s nice to finally have your quarterback, a player like that, back and completely healthy,” he added. “I know it didn’t look good when we were 2 and 3. But credit to the kids. They fought through it and knew they were good enough if we just did our job.”
As of last week he was third in passing among MAC quarterbacks, and his 116 yards of ‘catch me if you can’ was a strong indication that he’ll rise precipitously in the rushing figures, as well. Who knows of what we’re yet to see from Ziegenbusch and the Rockets. In his own words…they still have a lot of football to play.
Easy to like, and hard to forget, Logan Ziegenbusch is this week’s ‘Who’s Hot’ honoree on Press Pros…with our congratulations.
Peace of mind is as easy as the relationship you have with your local bank, and the St. Henry bank is small enough to know you, and big enough to serve you. The St. Henry Bank joins Press Pros Magazine in recognizing this week’s “Who’s Hot” honorees…coach Logan Ziegenbusch and the Anna Rockets.