GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — College golf teams from West Michigan are gearing up for national tournaments in the coming weeks and that includes the team from Cornerstone. But this season has been extra special for three of them who are all from the same family.
“A good friend of mine got me into golf when I was about 15 or 16 years old. So yeah, I started playing then and never stopped,” said Erik Fahlen.
Erik Fahlen and his sons, Tucker & EJ, from Grand Rapids can almost always be found on a golf course.
“I never felt pressure to play the game of golf. I grew up playing the game and it was kind of my first love,” said Erik Fahlen JR.
They’re all now a part of the team at Cornerstone, but we need to go back in time a bit to explain how we got here.
“I played golf competitively for Taylor University when I was in college,” said Erik.
“Well right when I first started looking at colleges, I didn’t want to go where my parents had gone. So I was looking everywhere but there (Taylor), said Tucker Fahlen.
The Fahlen family and Taylor University in Indiana go hand in hand. More than a dozen of their family members have graduated from Taylor. The most recently, being EJ.
“Yeah it’s a lot of fun to go to the same university and especially for Tucker and I to share the same coach, that was really special for he and I,” said EJ.
Even though he graduated from Taylor, EJ still had a 5th year of eligibility and with Tucker being the golf coach at Cornerstone and his dad joining the staff, it took little convincing him to become a Golden Eagle to finish his golf career.
“About a month after I graduated from Taylor and played in my last golf tournament things became more real and I saw the opportunity to get my masters done and my dad was becoming the head coach so everything kind of came together over the summer and I realized this was an opportunity that I couldn’t turn down,” said EJ.
The three of them now growing their father son relationship in a way that they’ve never done and never will again after EJ finishes his final season this spring.
“It’s very special, it’s like a dream job for me. I get to co-head coach along side my son. And my other son is on the team so it’s great,” said Erik.
“It really is a special way to end my college career because my first year of high school golf started like this. Where my dad took the high coach job at Northpointe Christian, Tucker was an assistant there and it was my first year of team competitive golf,” said EJ.
These three will continue to play golf together and will always cherish the memories they created this year, all being on the same team.
“It’s been a lot of fun and I’m sure that we’ll look back on the memories that we’ve created this year for a lot of years to come in the future,” said Tucker.
Cornerstone competed at the WHAC tournament on Saturday and came in 3rd place. This puts them out of an automatic bid to the NAIA national tournament but there’s a lot to be proud of from this season. As a team, they broke five school records and it was their best conference tournament finish since 2011. They also had four players in the top 10 individually.
