40 years ago the Jenison baseball team won the conference championship, it was the first OK Red title by a boys team in any sport in school history.
Friday the 1982 baseball team held a reunion and surprised legendary coach Gary Cook as the current Wildcats team hosted Forest Hills Central for a doubleheader.
"The individuals on it, besides being excellent athletes, they've all, talking to them tonight even, turned out to be such productive people in society out there," Cook said about his players from the 1982 team. "Just to talk to these guys and Dave Henning, just to see him again, everyone wondered how I could pitch him, he didn't look like a dynamite pitcher, but he pitched with his heart and he got people out and that is the kind of thing that these guys stood for, they competed."
That was Cook's 5th season as the varsity coach at Jenison, he would lead the Wildcats baseball program for 31 years (1978-2008) and is still the 8th winningest coach in state history with 801 wins.
During his tenure at Jenison, Cook would lead the Wildcats to 13 straight OK Red championships in baseball.
The reunion was organized by Tim Huizen who was a junior utility player on the '82 team.
"We all played well together, there was no player on the team that was for themselves, it was always about the team and supported each other, hung out together after games," Huizen said. "We spent a lot of time together in the gym getting ready for that season and just preparing for who knew what and Gary took us to the very end."
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