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Shorter's Justin Hooper making most of second chance
By Jim O'Hara
ROME – An athlete’s senior season is supposed to be a memorable one.
One year after watching what was supposed to be his final season with the Shorter University football team come to a grinding halt before it even began, Justin Hooper is eager to make his second chance at wrapping up his career a memorable one.
As Hooper and the Hawks prepare for their Mid-South Conference West Division opener Saturday at Faulkner (12 pm ET), the 6-foot-6 defensive end from Ranger still remembers that fateful Saturday in August more than a year ago when the Hawks squared off against each other in a scrimmage signaling an end to training camp.
“I got cut and [my knee] twisted under me. I felt something pop, so I knew I didn’t just tweak it,” Hooper recalled about the play that resulted in a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee. “But I knew immediately that I would be coming back. I just didn’t want to watch from the sideline in what would have been my last season.”
The road back to the field had been a long one.
Hooper didn’t start rehabilitating until last October, a lengthy process that forced him to miss the Hawks’ spring workouts this year.
He was determined to return, however, and show new defensive ends coach Johnny Gulledge that he was ready to go.
“When I got here I was told no one knew what he could do [coming off the injury],” Gulledge said of Hooper. “I know a lot of kids shy away [from the contact] after having an injury like that. He was a total unknown to me as a football player.”
But Gulledge and Hooper had crossed paths before.
When Gulledge was the head football coach at Adairsville High, Hooper was a freshman at the school and was far from looking like a football player, standing just 5-8 and tipping the scales at 140 pounds.
As a sophomore, Hooper transferred to Gordon Central High in Calhoun where he concentrated more on basketball and baseball – his father Troy played baseball at Shorter and his brother Cody is the starting first baseman on Shorter’s current squad.
But in his senior year, the growth genes kicked in.
“I just started growing and gaining weight,” said Hooper, who finally decided to play football in his last year of high school.
With the combination of his size and a rapid improvement of his skills, Shorter became interested in Hooper.
“I wasn’t expecting anything [when Shorter recruited me],” Hooper said. “I really didn’t know what to do. I just prayed about it and let things happen.”
Prayer also kept Hooper going in the wake of the knee injury last year and when Shorter returned for its 2011 preseason practices, he was ready.
“I didn’t think about what happened,” he said. “I just wanted to go out there and begin with a bang and pick up where I left off.”
“He knows how to play the position,” Gulledge said. “It was a matter of having the right intensity level and he’s answered the call.”
So have Shorter’s other defensive ends.
Hooper is one of six players in the rotation. Sophomores Jermel Bennett and Jamal Denson have the starting nod at the position; Hooper and junior Richard Hyde back them up; and sophomore Daniel Alexis and freshman Logan Masely round out Shorter’s depth.
All told, they have combined for 33 tackles, 3.5 tackles for loss, a sack and a fumble recovery. Still, getting to the quarterback remains the key goal.
“If we don’t get the sack,” said Gulledge, “we still want to put pressure on the quarterback. We’re doing okay, but there’s still room for improvement.”
“We want to have more pressure on defense and it starts on the line,” said Hooper, who was a member of Shorter’s 2008 conference championship team. “We want a group like those guys in 2008. We had a close group then and this year, so far so good.”
