Logan Bye is a master of self-motivation.
He and ice dance partner Eva Pate competed in just their second season as a team in 2020-21 with few competitions and no crowds, but Bye also graduated from college in May.
The 23-year-old completed his master's degree in biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan. He balanced being a full-time student with being an elite figure skater, and spent his last year-plus of college entirely online.
"It came down to self-motivation, for sure," Bye said. "It was, at times, very challenging. There was a solid two weeks within every single year that I got about four to five hours on average of sleep per night. I think you have to love learning. But the key is to just keep on track, and with doing skating on top of it all, I was able to find a balance."
Bye took an average of five classes per semester -- occasionally four, occasionally six -- and skated four hours a day, five days a week, plus an additional half hour to an hour of off-ice training each day. While he says he did not have much social time -- cooking dinner at home was one of his favorite ways to de-stress -- switching his focus from school to skating helped him excel at both.
"At times when school was stressful and I was going to skate, it was really nice because I was able to take my mind off school and academics and focus on the skating," Bye said. "And actually that relieved a lot of stress and opened up, for when I went back to school, my mind in order to complete the work that I needed to do. It wasn't, 'What do I need to do?' It was more of, 'Okay, this is step one, this is step two.' And so, with both kind of working off each other, that's how I was able to complete it in five years."
Bye's degree program at Michigan was a 4+1, which is an accelerated program that allows students to complete both a bachelor's and master's degree in five years. A biomedical engineering degree involves rigorous coursework and lab time, and when Bye teamed up with Pate in 2019, he was in the thick of school, and she became an invaluable support system.
"I think that Eva has been more than just my ice skating partner," Bye said. "She's been my life partner with a lot of things. Supportive in every single way possible, really. And the thing with her family, it's kind of like a second family. It's like having a second mom and dad and family, and I couldn't do it without them. I think that really it came down to their support that I was able to complete the degree, especially in the pandemic times. It's hard for everyone to be self-motivated to do their work. And so with them behind me and beside me and helping me through each step -- I was very grateful for them, and I still am."
Bye was also supported financially while he was pursuing his degree by U.S. Figure Skating's Memorial Fund and the Scott Hamilton Skaters Education Fund.
"I think the funding and the financial support that U.S. Figure Skating gives its athletes towards pursuing a degree is huge," he said. "And I cannot thank them enough for the opportunity."
Bye celebrated his graduation in May with family both biological and surrogate, but has not slowed down since finishing school.
He's been coaching and helping out at several rinks around his training base of Novi, Michigan, and he and Pate have also immediately kicked their training into a higher gear.
"One of the sacrifices I think that comes with going to school at the same time as training is training time, being able to train more and a little bit harder, stronger, faster, etc." Bye said. "It is a little bit of a sacrifice to go to school and give up a little bit of skating time for that, and I think that now that I've graduated, I've had a little more time to do that, and to give more time to training. So Eva and I are going into the summer a little bit more excited that we've been able to complete this part of my life, and move forward with our skating together."
In two seasons together, Pate and Bye have two seventh-place finishes at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships©. They made their Grand Prix debut at 2020 Guaranteed Rate Skate America, also finishing seventh.
After keeping their free dance last season, they will be skating two new programs in 2021-22 and are looking forward to competing in front of crowds again.
"Even though the pandemic was a sucky year, not great at the time because we didn't compete that much and there wasn't a lot of exposure as far as competition experience, there was a lot of time to train," Bye said. "And so we're excited to be able to showcase what we've been working on, and not just with the programs. Skating skills, just in general, our skating together and really our connection on the ice and being able to demonstrate the characters we're trying to portray within each program."
Then, of course, there's the matter of his newly-obtained degree. Bye says that, while he currently has no plans to stop skating, he would one day love to work in a lab.
"As kids, we decide, 'Oh, I want to be a doctor,' and some kids say, 'I want to be an astronaut.' Well, I was the kid that would say I wanted to be a doctor," Bye said. "I think that, for me, as I grew older, it wasn't necessarily being a doctor. It was more of an interest in the research side of things.
"And since then, it was just this growing interest in the field and in the community as a way to give back more than just doing what I'm doing now. But throughout my whole life, what I can do to further support the community."
And even though Bye still hasn't been able to slow down since graduation, he's still thrilled to have that piece of paper.
"I haven't really gotten a break, but I'd rather be busy than not," he said with a laugh. "It feels really good."
