Cooksey's HS Success Nearly Unmatched
October 28, 2020
By Keith Dunlap
Special for Second Half
As many wins as William Cooksey piled up playing tennis for Grosse Pointe Woods University Liggett the past four years, there were probably more times he was asked why he was playing high school tennis in the first place.
One of the country’s top junior players, who is ranked No. 8 in the nation for his age group, the 17-year-old Cooksey also won the under-18 boys single title at the USTA National Indoor Championships in Kansas City last year.
That seems like a recipe for wanting to just train full-time for junior circuit play, but Cooksey stuck with playing high school tennis for a simple reason.
“I got a lot of good memories and experiences, but I think the main thing was team environment,” Cooksey said. “Becoming a leader and adopting that role model role. I just had a bunch of buddies on the team, and it was just a fun time.”
In addition to having fun with friends, Cooksey also ended up leaving a major legacy with his high school accomplishments.
At the MHSAA Division 4 Individual Final on Oct. 21 in Portland, Cooksey won his fourth straight No. 1 singles title, putting him in rare company.
Cooksey became the first player from the Lower Peninsula to win Finals titles at No. 1 singles in any division all four years of high school since Francisco Castillo of Hamtramck did so from 1957-60. Cooksey became the fifth player total in state history to accomplish the feat; Marquette's Alec Olivier (2016-19) was the only other athlete since Castillo to win four Finals championships at the top flight.
Cooksey arrived at Liggett as a scrawny, 5-foot-6 kid who had enough skill to still win the Division 4 championship at No. 1 singles as a freshman in 2017.
He leaves high school as a chiseled, 6-foot-3 phenom who has developed his game further and will embark on a collegiate career at the University of Michigan.
Another mark Cooksey said that high school tennis left on him was that it helped launch him into an elite national junior player.
“I was always short, weak and I wasn’t doing so well in the younger divisions like the 12s and the 14s,” Cooksey said. “I was kind of struggling with it a little bit and getting down on myself. But after winning states my freshman year, I got a bunch of confidence. I started growing and started putting on some muscle. That’s when I started loving playing the game.”
Liggett head coach Mark Sobieralski said Cooksey enjoyed being around high school friends and teammates so much that he would often spend just as much time at practices trying to coach them up as he did playing himself.
“He loved the kids and to be with them,” Sobieralski said. “When he came to practice, he would take like four kids and work with them and then practice on his own. All of his friends, he got to play with and he had fun. That’s the greatest thing about him.”
But now that high school is over, Cooksey is moving at the high speed of his serve toward his future.
It was somewhat of a lost summer on the junior circuit not only because of COVID-19, but also because he was battling a wrist injury.
But Cooksey, who said he likes to pattern his game from professionals Jannik Sinner of Italy and Dennis Shapovalov of Canada, said he is much healthier and raring to get back into junior tournament action.
“My wrist is definitely feeling better,” Cooksey said. “I’m hoping they are going to have national indoors so I can defend my title there. That would be cool.”
No matter what the future holds for Cooksey, he will leave high school tennis knowing he forever made his place in the record books.
“When you see him, he looks like a 5-star,” Sobieralski said.
It’s certainly been hard to argue.
PHOTOS: (Top) University Liggett’s William Cooksey serves during his No. 1 singles match at the MHSAA Team Tennis Finals earlier this month. (Middle) Top to bottom: Liggett playing for No. 1 championships as a sophomore, junior and senior. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Meyers Serves, Strides for Norrix Fall Teams
By
Pam Shebest
Special for MHSAA.com
August 21, 2017
KALAMAZOO — Finding a face in a crowd of 357 runners erupting down a hillside all at once could be a daunting task.
But spotting sophomore Joe Meyers is easy, said Greg Savicke.
“He’ll be one of the ones out front,” the Kalamazoo Loy Norrix coach predicted.
That was true at Friday’s Portage Central Early Bird Invitational, where Meyers finished 14th with a time of 17 minutes, 12 seconds.
That sounds like a great time for a first race of the season, but Meyers was not celebrating.
“I had a pretty bad race,” he said. “I was training in Colorado for like a month with my new coach, and I put in a lot of training.
“I should have been well in the 16s. It was just not a good race.”
He didn’t have much time to fret.
The two-sport athlete had his first tennis match of the season Monday.
He’s playing No. 2 singles for the Knights after putting together a 21-5 record at the same flight last year.
Juggling two fall sports is not a problem for the amiable Meyers, with tennis taking priority.
“We work around the tennis schedule,” said Savicke, in his 29th year as Norrix’s head cross country coach. “We get Joe when he’s available. Early in the season it’s not so much, but down the stretch, yes.
“That’s the championship part of our season for us, in October, so we get him for the most important meets coming up.”
Both sports are in Meyers’ DNA.
His mother, Jody, got him on the tennis court when he was 5 and just playing for fun.
“Then I quit and mainly played hockey for years until seventh grade, then picked up tennis again,” he said.
He started running with his father, John, at age 9.
As a freshman, “I didn’t really want to pick one because I knew I could do pretty good in both,” Joe Meyers said. “It worked out last year.”
Both are individual sports, but in running, “you have to definitely have a lot more drive to go out and run by yourself because you can have a lot of excuses not to,” he said.
“In tennis, you go to group and you have to try as hard as you can. I don’t really get as tired in matches (since I’ve been) running.”
Meyers works out with sophomore Reed Crocker, Norrix’s No. 1 singles player.
Crocker qualified for the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals last season, losing his top-flight title match, 7-6(6), 3-6, 7-6(8), to top-seeded Varun Shanker of Midland Dow.
The only way Meyers will make it to the Finals is if Loy Norrix as a team qualifies, since the No. 1 player is the only individual eligible if the team falls short at Regionals. The No. 1 singles champion and runner-up at Regionals advance to Finals play even if their teams do not qualify.
“We have a better chance (as a team) this year,” Crocker said. “The team’s looking better.
“We’ve been doing a lot of sprints, a lot. (Sunday) was an easy day. We only ran a mile” before practice.
Crocker said Meyers pushes him to be better.
“Joe is like the marathon runner, so it helps me with conditioning and it helps me on the court because I know he can help build the wins,” Crocker said.
“We hit together, and he pushes me get better. I’ve had the joy to hit with him the last year or so because he joined my coach (Bill Jenkins, who is also Norrix’s head coach).”
Jenkins, in his third season with the Knights, has coached tennis for 38 years.
Meyers possesses a “good work ethic, and genetics are very much in his favor as far as a force in track,” Jenkins said. “He’s built for it in tennis as well.
“He’s also extremely coachable so he has a very good perspective, very good mindset and disposition for tennis. He’s extremely intense, extremely passionate and competitive, but he’s also very level-headed, so he’s able to channel a lot of that energy into proper use.”
Jenkins said, in his experience, it is unusual to have an athlete be so successful in two sports in the same season.
“He’s got very set dreams but he works at them on a daily basis, knowing that the only way to achieve them is through his commitment,” the coach said.
“Regardless of whatever natural distractions may come up, he seems to stay on track very diligently and is years ahead of his time.”
While Meyers needs the team to qualify for the MHSAA Finals in tennis, he has a much better shot of earning a berth in cross country.
Last year, then-senior Gabe Runyon was the only Norrix runner to qualify for the Lower Peninsula Division 1 competition at Michigan International Speedway.
Meyers just missed qualifying, finishing 21st at his Regional with a time of 17:04. The top 15 runners moved on.
Savicke lost Runyon and four of his other top seven runners to graduation this spring, noting that Meyers has moved up from second in the order to become the team’s top runner.
Meyers has improved on his 2016 Regional time and has an unofficial personal best of 16:30. He has hit 17:00 in a race, and his short-term goal is to get into the 16s during competition.
Said Savicke: “Joe’s father was a runner in high school for (Kalamazoo) Hackett in the 1980s, and he’s really active in bicycling and running events. He’s brought Joe along with him.
“I think that just paid dividends with his running abilities. I saw Joe in middle school, so I knew he would be a good fit for us.”
Norrix’s next cross country meet is Thursday with Meyers leading a varsity contingent of junior Will Carrier, senior Zach Skinner, sophomore Myles Baker, junior Rowan Mathieson, senior Garrett Bloom and sophomore Erick Ponce.
Once the fall season is over, Meyers does not plan to leave sports behind.
He bicycles and was the Michigan Bicycle Racing Association road race junior state and point series champ a year ago and “might pick up hockey or swimming this year,” he said.
In the spring, he is part of the varsity track & field team, competing in the 1,600, 3,200 and 3,200 relay.
Pam Shebest served as a sportswriter at the Kalamazoo Gazette from 1985-2009 after 11 years part-time with the Gazette while teaching French and English at White Pigeon High School. She can be reached at [email protected] with story ideas for Calhoun, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties.
PHOTOS: (Top) Kalamazoo Loy Norrix sophomore Joe Meyers returns a volley during a tennis practice Sunday. (Middle) Clockwise from top left: Meyers, tennis teammate Reed Crocker, Knights’ boys tennis coach Bill Jenkins, Knights’ boys cross country coach Greg Savicke. (Below) Meyers pushes ahead of a pack during Friday’s Early Bird race at Portage Central. (Photos by Pam Shebest.)