Editor’s note: This is the third and final article in a three-part series exploring the balance Ohio student-athletes strike between their academics, athletics and extracurricular activities.
On an early spring day, when temperatures hovered around 40 degrees, members of the men’s golf team gathered in a practice bunker at Athens Country Club to watch their peers loft shots from the futile pit of sand, through bitter winds and onto the putting surface.
Although the golf course’s conditions had yet to show signs of spring, players joked while practicing their short game before heading out to play their rounds.
Just minutes before the Bobcats prepared to tee off against each other for a spot to play in their upcoming tournament, they were laughing and jostling as if nothing was at stake.
“We spend a lot of quality time (together), (so) it’s easy to be friends,” junior Andrew Mlynarski said. “It’s such a competitive thing when you’re on the golf course, but when you’re off the golf course, you can really lighten up and be friends.”
The players’ amiability seems to have created an 11-man family for Brad Burgess, a sophomore from Ontario, Canada, and the rest of the Bobcats.
“We all like to make sure we’re staying on top of things,” Burgess said. “Our team is very close — if someone gets out of line, we like to stay on top of them and make sure they’re doing the right thing.”
Burgess, a management information systems major with ambitions to double-major in marketing, said his ability to keep academics and athletics up to par has become more manageable since coming to Ohio. While in high school, he spent a majority of the summer months in the United States competing in amateur tournaments, and he has found balancing life as an athlete and a student to be more manageable since coming to college.
“During the first semester, you get used to balancing your time with practice and work,” Burgess said. “After the first semester, you get rid of all of the butterflies. I’ve adapted to the college golf lifestyle and I love it.”
With days consumed by early-morning weight lifting, classes, practice, qualifying for tournaments and completing schoolwork, the Bobcats still find time to organize friendly impromptu competitions and hang out together away from the course.
“We’ll sometimes go shoot around in The Convo since we have our golf lounge over there,” Burgess said.
Burgess, who is a fan of many sports, has also played hockey since his early childhood and credits his competitiveness to the most meager of activities, such as playing table tennis with his teammates.
Perhaps what brings Ohio’s roster together — all but two athletes are from Ohio — is the tradition of camaraderie in a sport dominated by individual play. That bonding creates unity within the team, which is evident through the tradition of Ohio golfers’ living situations. Burgess plans on living with teammate Mike Engelman next year.
“They live in the dorm their freshman and sophomore year, and they live with someone from the golf team their junior and senior year,” coach Bob Cooley said. “That’s just how it goes.”
Much like the ups and downs of spring weather, Ohio experiences wavering performances from its players.
But what may be more enduring than the team members’ play is their unwavering obligation to each other.
ch115710@ohiou.edu
@ColinHanner
