Many athletes who grow up in Minnesota claim they’ve been surrounded by the sport of hockey for their entire lives just by simply living in the ‘State of Hockey’, but when Jaxon Cook says that he’s grown up around the sport, he means it. 

A glance at the 16-year-old skater’s Elite Prospects page might have you questioning how he’s been exposed to the sport so much already at such a young age, but if you take a deeper dive, you’ll quickly find out why. Cook’s birthplace is listed as Rapid City, South Dakota, which isn’t a city known for producing hockey players, but the only reason that Cook’s parents were living in the area at the time was due to his father, Brendan, playing a season in the CHL with the Rapid City Rush in 2009-10. Brendan, a Manitoba native, played college hockey at Bemidji State before a multi-year professional hockey career spanning many different leagues and countries, so eldest child Jaxon has simply been surrounded by hockey for literally his entire life. 

Cook, despite being born in South Dakota, wasn’t in the Midwest long before his parents then made the move back overseas for his father to compete in professional hockey throughout a number of different countries and leagues in Europe. Jaxon doesn’t remember all of it, considering he was extremely young for a large portion of the time that his family spent in Europe, but his father competed for teams based in Scotland, Denmark, Italy, and Germany by the time that Jaxon and his younger sister, Aiden, would eventually move back to the United States. 

Despite not having memories of all the different places that he’s lived in during his first 10 years of life, Cook has fond memories of the times when he would get to have his own stall in his dad’s professional locker rooms before even some of the rookies on the roster would get their own. He was always around the ice and always around the sport of hockey, so it just seemed to make sense that he would one day play the game too, once he became old enough to skate. He loved being around tons of great people in hockey for the years that his family lived in Europe, and he even remembers times when his dad would have keys to the rink so he could get ice time basically whenever he needed it. 

Jaxon spent the longest amount of time in Germany while living overseas, and he was fluent in the language there at one point as well. Ask him to speak it now, though, and that might not go so well, but he’s confident that it would come back to him if he were immersed in that situation again. He also has many positive memories of when he got to live in the Alps in Italy for one season with his family, where German is also one of the primary languages for those residents.  

Once Jaxon’s father ended his professional playing career, the family wound up moving to central/northern Minnesota, more specifically to the Perham area, which is close to where his mother grew up in the Detroit Lakes area. They lived there for a while, and Jaxon played for hockey teams in the area until the Cook family moved once again, this time to the greater Twin Cities metro area (Woodbury), when Jaxon was headed into middle school. 

With Cook already showing a lot of promise out on the ice, there were obviously plenty of great options out there for where he could attend high school in the Twin Cities, but his family eventually decided that Gentry Academy would be the best fit. 

“The main factor in going to Gentry was that I played on a Brick team when I was around the age of 10, and the coach we had was Billy Hengen, and he had coached the boys team there [at Gentry] and won a state championship with them and then went on to coach the girls team and won a state championship with them as well, so he was a big factor in letting us know what the school was all about, and once I got there, there was just so much to love,” said Cook about why the Stars stood out to his family. “[Hengen] was a big factor, but there were also so many other great things that you don’t really see from a surface-level perspective.” 

It didn’t take long for Jaxon to adjust to the ranks of high school hockey once he joined the Gentry Academy varsity roster in 2024-25, which made sense considering his lifetime of experience already in the sport thus far. As just a freshman, the 5-foot-10 forward netted 28 points through 26 games (fourth on the team in overall scoring) as someone who was just 14/15-years-old throughout the season. The Stars were a solid team that year, posting an 18-8 overall record, and were led in scoring by now Wisconsin commit Ryland Rooney. Cook says that it was pretty easy to adjust to the varsity level since a lot of the older guys on the team wound up being great mentors to him both on and off the ice.

“I definitely felt like I was really well prepared going into it [his first season of varsity hockey], and I had a lot of great mentors like Brock Fairbanks, who was the senior captain my freshman year, and I had a pretty tight bond with him starting the year off, and he let me know what I had to do to be ready for that level and that was a big piece of it for sure,” said Cook about his freshman season. 

Although Jaxon posted very good stats in his rookie year, he really started to draw more eyes to his game during his sophomore campaign, where he led the Stars in scoring by posting 60 points (33G-27A) in 30 games played. So what changed from Year 1 to Year 2? Cook says that it was a mixture of newfound confidence and also plenty of hard work that he put in that offseason to round out his skill set. 

“I think the biggest piece for me was just my confidence and knowing that I belonged, knowing that I’m one of the best players in the state and just having the confidence to go out there every game and trying to prove that,” he said. “The summer training that I had with APX definitely helped a lot as well, and just growing my game and becoming a more complete hockey player.” 

Despite Cook having a highly successful season on the scoresheet, many Minnesota high school hockey fans weren’t quite sure of what to think of Gentry Academy in 2025-26. The roster had plenty of talent, but the results of the squad were quite up and down in the first half of the season. In late January, though, the team started to turn things around.

“We battled a lot of injuries all throughout the start of the year and a lot of our top guys were out at some point, but I felt like we had such a tight-knit group last year that even though the regular season didn’t go as well as we would have liked that we were all just so bought into the team that none of that stuff mattered when it came to playoffs,” Jaxon said about the team mentality when the squad was headed into section competition. 

The Stars received the No. 5 seed in Section 4AA and had a tough draw in their quarterfinal match by playing a tricky East Ridge squad that proved they weren’t a joke. Gentry was down by a score of 3-1 about halfway through the game, but ended up scoring five straight to win the match, 6-5. Cook had a hat trick in the quarterfinal, and two assists, for a five-point night. After the victory, Gentry would advance on to face off against traditional 4AA power Hill-Murray in the semifinals. 

“For us, we already had a lot of confidence going into the Hill-Murray game. We were more worried about East Ridge, to be honest, because we went into that game a little bit unsure due to how our regular season went, but we handled East Ridge, and I think that everyone going into the Hill game, everyone in the locker room was confident,” said Cook. “We all knew what had to be done, and we were just all so bought in to winning that there really wasn’t even a doubt.” 

The Stars went on to upset the No. 1-seeded Pioneers in a 4-2 victory in late-February of 2026. This propelled them into the section championship match as the No. 5-seed, against No. 3-seed White Bear Lake. 

After two incredibly solid postseason section victories, the Stars felt on top of the world in terms of their confidence and went on to defeat the Bears in dominant 3-0 fashion. This meant that Cook and the Gentry squad were headed to the Class AA state tournament. 

Although the team had a great time experiencing the legendary Minnesota state tournament in the spring of 2026, the Stars had an unlucky draw, having to face No. 1-seed Minnetonka in the state quarterfinals, eventually falling in a 5-0 decision to the Skippers in early March. Despite the loss, Cook says it was a great experience to get to play in St. Paul at the Xcel Energy Center (now renamed Grand Casino Arena) and that going out on the ice for warmups was an unforgettable moment when you realize just how loud the arena environment can get at the event. 

With Cook having a highly successful season both individually and with his team in 2025-26, he started to garner the interest of Division I college hockey coaches throughout the year. Coaches were allowed to start contacting the Minnesotan skater on January 1st of 2026, and he had his first official recruiting call just a few days into the New Year. It turns out that the very first program to call him would wind up being just the perfect fit - the University of Maine.

Cook didn’t feel too pressured by the whole recruiting process; he simply focused on playing his season at Gentry and would hop on a call with interested programs whenever needed, but he let his advisors take charge of the process so that he wouldn’t be stressed or distracted by going through all of it by himself. His father also had some good advice for him on the ins and outs of the recruiting process, but he didn’t try to sway him much towards one school or another since he knew that Jaxon would eventually need to pick what he felt was the right choice and the right fit for his own needs. 

After being in talks with the Black Bears for a while, Cook wound up taking a visit out to the campus in August of 2026 (the very first month that he was allowed to take an official visit to the program). After seeing it all in person, the Minnesotan skater was sold. He officially announced his verbal commitment to the program on August 24th. 

“I’m honored and excited to announce my commitment to the University of Maine. First, I’d like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, for giving me this opportunity. I’d also like to thank my family, friends, coaches and advisors for all the support and advice they have given me along the way. #goblackbears” Cook posted to his social media pages. 

“For me, it’s just the way that they play,” said the 5-foot-10 forward about why he chose the Black Bears. “In my recruiting process, it didn’t matter to me where I went, as long as it was a good fit, and I felt like the way they play is such a similar game to mine - they play hard, and they really pay a lot of attention to the details up and down the ice, so that part was just that the hockey there is a no-brainer. Once I got out there for a visit, it just sealed the deal. The people are great, and Maine is also just beautiful.” 

There are a handful of other Minnesotans committed to the University of Maine at the moment, but no one that Cook specifically knows quite well yet; he’ll probably get to know a few of them in the future once he eventually makes the jump up into junior hockey. 

“I’m a 200-foot center; that’s how I describe myself,” said Cook about what his style of hockey is like, for any Maine fans who may be unfamiliar with his game. “I’m someone who can score goals and make plays around the net, but I also take a lot of pride in the defensive zone, whether that’s blocking shots or finishing checks.” 

“Jaxon has been a dynamic offensive presence from a young age, but the massive boosts to his hard skill, defensive tactics, and his overall pace of play have been astounding over the past calendar year,” said APX Director of Player Development Wes Jirovec about Cook. “He’s ultra-competitive, loves to win, and has tremendous confidence and poise in big moments. He was a dominant two-way presence in Section 4AA playoffs last season. While there’s still a lot of development to accomplish before he’s wearing a Black Bear sweater, it’s very promising to see a young man who has already established a winning mentality.”

As for his future, since Cook is only 16-years-old, it’ll be a while before he eventually joins the ranks of college hockey. He is fully committed to returning to Gentry Academy this season for his junior year of high school hockey, and will likely be competing in the Upper Midwest High School Elite League and then possibly suiting up for a few games with Chicago of the USHL before the start of the varsity season. 

The Stars will return a lot of its top skaters in 2026-27, so watch out for a tough Gentry Academy squad this winter. 

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