Junior Ben Cook has helped to lead the Ferris State men’s golf team to their 13th Consecutive NCAA Division II Tournament appearance, and he has been awarded the GLIAC’s most prestigious award in the process.
Cook was tabbed as “Men’s Golfer of the Year” by the conference this year, in what has been his most successful collegiate golfing season. Cook has been among the top ten in the standings in all but two of the Bulldogs’ golf outings this year, yet he stresses the team’s success over personal accomplishments.
“I don’t really think of it as since I’m the best player, so I have to play the best every time. Anybody on my team can beat me on any given day,” Cook says. “For me, I just try to grind out every shot and do the best I can to help my team.”
Despite the high honor associated with the award, Cook did not receive any grandiose announcement of his accomplishment through the conference, but rather through a friend.
“I actually found out about the award from one of my high school buddies that goes to Grand Valley. He saw it on the GLIAC site and talked to me to say congrats, and that’s how I found out. I heard around 10 a.m. so there wasn’t a huge celebration or anything,” Cook said.
Cook and company helped to prolong what has become a tradition of success for Ferris golf, as the team earned a NCAA Division II Tournament bid for the 13th consecutive year, which is one of the longest streaks in the country.
“The coach has done a good job finding people that play at a high level,” Cook says. “Coach (Michael Mignano) has been here for eight or nine years now, and he’s been able to bring in guys who can keep that success going consistently.”
Coach Mignano also brought in Cook as a recruit, but actually wasn’t the one to initiate the conversation.
“I kind of almost recruited myself, which sounds weird, but I was the one hitting up coach at first instead of him coming to me. I’d email him when I played well and I asked him to come watch me in high school,” Cook said.
Once Coach Mignano took note of Cook’s skills on the course, he invited him for a campus visit, and showed him just portions of what Ferris has to offer for its students.
“We went back and forth for a while, then he invited me up here to Ferris. He let me go to a hockey game and I got to hang out with some of the people who were on the golf team already. I just got to live the life of a college kid for a day,” Cook said.
As Cook’s junior season comes to a close, he will have one final year of eligibility remaining. However, he won’t tee off for the Bulldogs until the 2016-17 season as a redshirt senior, as a result of a year-long internship that will take him off campus next year.
“I’ll hardly know anyone on the team once I come back. I’ll know some freshmen from this year, but everyone in my grade will be graduated by then, and we only have one sophomore, so it’ll be mostly new guys,” Cook said.
Still, because Cook won’t be leaving until November, he plans on practicing with, and supporting the team by attending tournaments, even though he’ll be unable to compete with his fellow Dawgs.