Cole Zaferakis, Grace Honigford named Polar Bear of the Month winners for April

By Wes Mayberry

ADA — Senior Cole Zaferakis (Liverpool, N.Y.) and junior Grace Honigford (West Chester/Lakota East) have been selected as the Ohio Northern athletic department's Polar Bear of the Month award winners for April.

Zaferakis, a goalkeeper for the men's lacrosse team, has started all 17 games for the Polar Bears this season. He posted a 5-3 record with 61 saves in April, capping the month with a nine-save performance in a 10-3 win over Otterbein in the Ohio Athletic Conference Tournament quarterfinals. His high for the month was 13 saves in a 9-5 loss to OAC Regular Season champion Baldwin Wallace.

Zaferakis has been named OAC Defensive Player of the Week three times this season, including once in April.

He has a 12-5 record in 2023, matching the program's single-season wins record he set as a junior. His 132 saves thus far in 2023 are a single-season record, and he has a .559 save percentage and 7.23 GAA this year.

Named to the InsideLacrosse.com All-Freshman Team in 2020, Zaferakis has started all 54 of his career games at ONU and boasts a 36-18 record with 431 saves, a .535 save percentage and 8.29 GAA. He is ONU's all-time leader in saves and goalkeeper wins.

The Polar Bear men's lacrosse team is 12-5 overall and finished 6-3 in OAC play to earn the No. 4 seed for the conference tournament. ONU is set to face top-seeded Baldwin Wallace on the road in the OAC Tournament semifinals on Wednesday at 7 p.m.

Honigford closed the 2022-23 women's golf season with a team-best 78.8 average for 18 holes through 20 rounds of play.

The Polar Bear women's golf team competed in four events in April, winning two of them, and capped the month with a record-setting performance in finishing as the runner-up at the OAC Championships.

Honigford earned Medalist honors to lead ONU to the team championship at the Bluffton Spring Invitational on April 1-2. She shot a 73 as the team recorded a school-record 18-hole score of 306.

Honigford shot a two-round 165 to finish tied for fourth as ONU won the Polar Bear Easter Classic on April 7-8.

She ended the month by shooting a 54-hole school-record 231 through three rounds of the OAC Championships en route to finishing as the runner-up in the tournament with a 72-hole school-record 313.

With Honigford leading the way, the Polar Bears placed second as a team with a score of 1301, breaking the previous 72-hole school record of 1426. Northern had broken the school's 54-hole record by 15 strokes with a 961 through the first three rounds.

A four-time OAC Golfer of the Week this season, including once in April, Honigford earned All-OAC honors for the third time in her career courtesy of her top-14 finish at the OACs. She was the OAC champion as a freshman and co-champion as a sophomore.

Honigford's 78.8 average in 2023 matches her single-season program record from 2021-22. In three seasons at ONU, she is a 10-time OAC Golfer of the Week honoree with 32 top-10 finishes, including 15 Medalist honors, in 35 career tournaments.

2022-23 Polar Bear of the Month Honorees