EAST LANSING, Mich. (WLNS) — The Michigan State University Men’s Golf team will be hosting the Folds of Honor Collegiate event in Grand Haven from Sept. 26-28.

The 18-team tournament is at American Dunes Golf Course. In his 12 years as the Spartans’ coach, Casey Lubahn has never hosted an event like this.

How MSU ended up hosting the event is quite the story.

“A friend of mine who does golf accessories, like really high-end golf accessories, head covers, things like that, that sell in golf shops. He had started making some of these head covers for American Dunes,” said Lubahn. “While we were talking, we said, ‘wouldn’t that be cool to host a big college event there?'”

That brainstorm led to a phone call and then a quick trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma. In Tulsa, Lubahn and Lieutenant Colonel Dan Rooney came up with the whole idea.

The Spartans are hosting four events this year, but the one at American Dunes certainly takes the cake.

“It’s a partnership between the Folds of Honor, American Dunes, the Golf Coaches Association of America, which represents all golf coaches, and Michigan State,” said Lubahn. “So there’s a lot of people in the room and obviously the budgets are bigger. The visibility’s bigger. The teams are bigger.”

But that’s not all that the tournament wants to accomplish.

“We’ve created an event that has a mission wider than just collegiate athletics,” said Lubahn.

The coach mentioned the awareness the tournament is trying to bring to Folds of Honor and what they’re doing for fallen soldiers and their families, and soldiers who have sustained disabilities while doing their service.

“A lot of these young people who the Folds of Honor are sending to college were very little when their family member was killed or disabled in action. So every story kind of drives [an] emotional response,” Lubahn said.

Want to know more about what to expect come tournament day? Watch the video in the player above.