MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia University senior Logan Perkins is one of five Mountaineer golfers competing in this year's Big 12 Golf Championship, which begins today at Whispering Pines Golf Club in Trinity, Texas.
 
Perkins is also one of three Mountaineers ranked inside the PGA TOUR University Top 125 at No. 104.
 
The Locust Grove, Georgia, resident said recently that he was strictly a baseball player until switching schools when he was about 13. The father of one of the guys he hung out with at his new school owned the local golf course.
 
"I started to hang out with them and started playing golf," Perkins says. "I was terrible and for about a year they just destroyed me and I got tired of it, so I literally practiced every day. Then, I got good at it, and I was like, 'I think I like this better than baseball.'"
 
He ended up becoming one of the top junior golfers and Georgia and wound up earning a scholarship to play at WVU.
 
Perkins says he learned pretty quickly what he needed to do to become a consistent collegiate golfer.
 
"Going back to my official visit, coach (Sean Covich) showed me the van, and he said, 'If you don't make the lineup, this van is going to leave the parking lot without you so you better do what you have to do to make the trip.' I told him the van was not going to leave without me, even though I had no clue what college golf was at the time," Perkins recalls.
 
"I was pretty good in junior golf in Georgia, and I come in and I'm thinking, 'No problem, I'm going to get my spot.' The first qualifier, I don't know what I shot, but it was not good, and I probably finished eighth or ninth out of the nine or 10 guys we had at the time, and I looked at some of the older guys in the lineup wondering, 'What did these guys do to get a spot in the lineup?'"
 
What Perkins quickly discovered was that they were always in the fairway while he sometimes wasn't.
 
"It might not be super-low every time but just right around par and everything is in play," he says. "They're not getting into a lot of trouble on the course, and they know where to miss it and what they need to do at the right time.
 
"So I kind of learned quickly from that, and I decided that's where I was going to go with my game – hit a lot of fairways, try and hit a lot of greens and the days that I putt good and chip good I'm going to have a really good number posted," he explains. "The days I don't hit it really good I'm going to rely on my short game.
 
"I've always been a pretty good wedge player, and I'd say that's what stands out the most. When I get close to the greens, I've been able to save a lot of pars in situations that were probably big for the team coming down the stretch in tournaments or in Big 12 match play," he adds.
 
As Perkins puts the finishing touches on his collegiate career, he said he's achieved almost everything he's wanted to do as a collegiate golfer.
 
"I haven't won any tournaments, but I've played a lot of really good tournaments," he says. "Every year I've gotten a chance to go to all of these events and show what I have. It's kind of gone by pretty fast, but the teams we've had and some of the guys I've gotten to meet and play with, it's made it a pretty good journey. I probably wouldn't want to spend it anywhere else."
 
Perkins and his Mountaineer teammates will be paired with Iowa State this morning in the opening round of the Big 12 Championships. Play continues through Wednesday.
 
This week's Life as a Mountaineer was produced by Sean Merinar and is presented by WVU Medicine.