The Atlantic Ocean separates Joe Cookson ’25 from all that’s familiar.
After signing a contract this summer to play professional basketball with Finland’s Kipina Basket Aanekoski, the Seattle native landed in the Nordic country last fall to train for his rookie season.
While wholly unfamiliar with his new surroundings, Cookson was amped to continue his playing career more than 5,000 miles east of the place he called home for four years.
“This is something I’ve been working toward my whole life,” he says. “There’s a lot of excitement and eagerness to get started, but this is also a huge change of scenery. I’ve embraced the change because I know it’ll help shape me into who I’m supposed to be.”
Cookson, a 6-foot-6 guard who earned his degree in mathematics, finished his career at Pomona a three-time first-team all-conference honoree and one of the College’s most prolific scorers.
Pomona-Pitzer Career Scoring Leaders
Twenty-five Sagehens have scored more than 1,000 career points. Below are the top five:
1,825 Micah Elan (2016-20)
1,751 Bill Cover (1990-94)
1,744 Daniel Rosenbaum (2014-18)
1,709 Joe Cookson (2021-25)
1,545 Jeremiah Martin (1997-2001)
His 1,709 career points rank fourth in program history, and only two other Sagehens scored more points in a single season than he did as a senior (594). Cookson ranks ninth in career three-pointers made (144), seventh in assists (317) and tenth in blocks (106).
The Sagehens won 76 games across his four years and earned NCAA Tournament berths in 2021-22 and 2022-23.
Before leaving for Finland, Cookson traveled to Spain this summer with a collection of outgoing seniors from schools in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. In Finland Cookson has already picked up the locals’ love of saunas, and while Finnish is an especially difficult language to learn, “Everyone is super patient and super accommodating,” he says.
Cookson is one of three Americans on Kipina Basket Aanekoski, which won 17 games last season and advanced to the Meisten Divisioona IA semifinals. The team’s 2025-26 campaign runs through March.
A versatile scorer in college enamored with the detail and nuance of the game, Cookson is malleable in that he can adjust to any role he’s given—scorer, distributor, shooter.
There are limitless ways to play the game, he says. Here or an ocean away.
“Basketball is such an open book,” he says. “You just keep reading and keep discovering, and that’s what keeps me going.”