Success came easily and early to Whitney Hooks, who won four consecutive Class 4A state shot championships as a member of the Cascade High School girls track team.
Success will surely come later, too, though Hooks is finding there is sometimes a difficult transition when an athlete moves from one level to the next.
“Sometimes I bring myself down,” said Hooks, who is redshirting in her first season at the University of Washington. “I think that’s my downside as an athlete. But my coach told me, ‘Whitney, we didn’t ask you to come in and conquer the world in your freshman year.’ “
If occasional discouragement is her athletic downside, it might be just about the only thing. Hooks is a superb athlete who achieved an unprecedented feat with her four straight Class 4A state titles. She was also a high school All-American for the second time in 2006 and set a state-meet record with a heave of 47 feet, 3 inches.
A week or so later, Hooks was even better with a throw of 51 feet, 1 1/2 inches in the Meet of Champs event shortly after the state meet, her personal best in the event and a meet record. Her top mark in the discus came the year before with a fling of 151 feet.
Of the two events, “the shot put is my baby,” said Hooks, who nonetheless was also good enough to win two state discus championships. “I think it always will be. And I would say it’s the better of the two for me.”
By the time she finished her high school career last spring, Hooks had five of the top 10 distances in the shot put in state history.
Despite her prep success, the 19-year-old Hooks is redshirting in her first season at the UW, though she can still compete unattached. Next season she will still be a freshman in eligibility for the Huskies.
Often, Hooks said, throwers see a slip in their marks after arriving in college, which is a normal part of the transition process. Right now, Hooks is doing a lot of weight lifting and running, which are things she did sparingly in high school.
“I’ve been getting a lot stronger,” said Hooks, who says she has lost 30 pounds since arriving at the UW. “But I still have a lot of improvement to do in the weight room and technique. Right now it’s just a matter of putting in the work. The work you have to put in in college is tremendous when it comes to run and lifting. When you get into college, it’s a totally different thing.
“In the beginning,” she went on, “I was really disappointed to be redshirting. But when I saw the improvements that I needed to make and when I thought about my goals for the future, I knew it was going to be way better for me to redshirt. It’s made me focus on just my training.”
That future, she hopes, includes a place on the United States track and field team at an upcoming Olympic Games.
“I would love to be an Olympic thrower,” she said. “Throwing is my heart. Throwing is what I love to do.”
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