ITHACA, N.Y. -- It's always game time in the Debusschere house — cards, board games, trivia, and golf — anything with a score to keep. The teams almost never change: Tyler and his brother Jackson '25 versus Mom and Dad.

The stakes? Bragging rights, mostly. But in that tight circle of four, competition was always the family's love language.

"Every time I go home, I look forward to it," junior men's golfer Tyler Debusschere said. "We play Kaiser, we play Clue, Catan, all four of us. It's simple, but it's unique to our family."

That closeness shaped everything that has come about. Tyler grew up in Wallingford, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia, in a house where sports and support went hand in hand. His parents were both former Colgate athletes. His dad, Dave, coached youth hockey; his mom, Kira, ran soccer practices. The message was always the same: Work hard. Be humble. Do your best.

"They were tough but fair," he said. "They'd tell me when I messed up, but they always had my back. That kind of tough love really made me who I am."                 

That foundation carried into the way the brothers pushed each other. Jackson was the early standout — the better hockey and soccer player, the one whose pace Tyler chased. The curse of being a younger brother.

Unfortunately, Jackson landed in the hospital at the age of 13 with an extraordinarily rare autoimmune disorder that attacked his heart. Tyler was in sixth grade when his family started spending long nights in hospitals, and he vividly recalls the surgeon's steady voice in the middle of the night, as well as the nurses who handed him apple juice and played Mario Kart while they waited.

That's where medicine first took root for Tyler — watching a medical team care for a family, not just a patient.

Tyler earned his EMT license, logged hours in operating rooms, worked as a teacher's assistant for a year and now works in Dr. Anushka Dongre's research lab on campus studying ways to sensitize resistant breast tumors to immunotherapy. It's work that asks for the same traits golf demands: careful prep, clear plans, and accountability when variables don't cooperate. His grade point average of better than 4.0, majoring in Biological Sciences with a concentration in Molecular and Cell Biology and a minor in Infectious Disease, speaks for itself. Medical school is next.

Tyler didn't start playing seriously until high school — years after most Division I golfers — but weekend rounds with his family gave him something just as valuable. He discovered a game that not only rewarded creativity, composure and patience, but provided him with valuable lessons that parallel life itself.

"I just love that golf is never the same twice," he said. "Different course, different wind, different plan every day."

Tyler learned to love the planning as much as the swing — mapping angles, choosing patience, eliminating big numbers. The creativity hooked him: every hole new, every lie a choice.

By the time college came around, Cornell fit perfectly — high-level science, a team that shared both scores and standards, and a campus close enough to feel like home. The opportunity to be teammates with his brother was something he could not turn down.

Just as in life, golf has taught Tyler how to face challenges when they arise.

"After my senior year of high school, I hit a real low. I couldn't break 80 all summer," he said. "I was headed to Cornell for preseason and was panicked. My parents pulled me aside and said, 'There's more to life than golf. You have a family that loves you.' It was the reset I needed."

Tyler listened, and slowly, the reset worked — and so did he.

In Ithaca, he found his footing, becoming one of Cornell's straightest ball-strikers, a reliable scorer, a steady teammate. He posted an early top 12 finish at the Ivy Championships and banked the kind of memories that last: his first collegiate eagle at Lake Placid ("pitched it short and watched it trickle … and disappear"), a spring-break heater at Seminole ("four under through six … then reality"), another eagle among two top-15 individual finishes this fall.

On winter weekends Tyler still scratches the old hockey itch, working games at Lynah Rink as an official statistician, just as his brother did before him — "a front-row seat to two of the best teams in the country."  You might otherwise find him in the library, the lab, with friends or strumming his dad's old Fender he's teaching himself to play, country music humming softly in the background.

Golf keeps him grounded; medicine gives him purpose. Both trace back to that same foundation — family time and endless games – the one fairway he'll always hit.