Golf has played a big role in Josh House’s life. It’s a sport he started playing a lot more after high school. And it’s a sport he brought to SUNY Cobleskill.

“It was kind of my purpose before not to go because I didn’t know what I wanted to do,” said House on attending college. “So now, with me having kind of more direction, it was a lot easier for me to make a decision to go back to school.”

But not as a student-athlete, at least originally, for the landscape contracting major.

“I want to design golf courses,” he said. “So my intent is I kind of work back, so what you need to become a golf course architect and things like that.”

During the application process, he mentioned an interest in golf. Soon, head coach Megan Bowman reached out, and before House knew it, he was a student athlete at 29 years old.

“The first two weeks were pretty overwhelming with everything going on,” House said. “But after that, once I got into a rhythm, it wasn’t easy, but it was a lot easier than I was expecting.”

House excelled in his freshman season. He finished ninth at the North Atlantic Conference Championship Tournament. It was good enough to become the first player in program history to earn all-conference team honors.

“It was the first time I played golf competitively. So it was definitely a different animal being out there and playing by the rules, and those short putts seemed a lot harder when they meant it,” he said.

It’s hard to tell there’s a decade gap between House, now a sophomore, and his teammates when they’re on the fairway. They bond, joke, and push each other to get better on every swing.

“I think the good thing about golf is it’s not physical as other sports so being older is not necessarily an advantage,” he said. “It’s still an even playing field. Golf’s hard no matter how old you are.”

House sacrifices a lot to make this all work, which includes making an hour one way commute to school and working a part-time job. But the fact he gets to do something he loves, now and hopefully later, is what drives him every day.

“Every time I come back to school, there’s that motivation to keep going and finish, and there’s a light at the end of the tunnel kind of thing and I can actually start doing something I actually like to do,” House said.