University of North Carolina Athletics
Hooker Returns to North Carolina Via Alaska
March 4, 2005 | Men's Basketball
March 4, 2005
By Adam Lucas, Tar Heel Monthly
When you list your hometown as Palmer, Alaska, there are certain questions you grow to expect.
C.J. Hooker just smiles and ticks off the answers.
"No, we didn't live in an igloo."
"No, my parents aren't Eskimos."
"No, we didn't live on top of a glacier."
It is, however, Alaska. So there are plenty of the stereotypical Alaska staples: a reindeer farm eight miles outside of town, average temperatures in January that range from 6 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit, and a musk ox farm (the only place in the world where the exotic animals are raised domestically) that contains 200 musk ox.
"Palmer is pretty in the summer," Hooker says. "It's very green. In the winter, well, it's winter in Alaska. And we get a little bit of cold and wind because it's in the valley."
The 4,385 people who call Palmer home are just 42 miles from Anchorage, and many commute there every day via the Glenn Highway. The Alaska State Fair arrives in Palmer every summer and summer temperatures can creep into the low 70s. It's easy to see why the idyllic--again, idyllic if you don't mind the cold--town has experienced renewed growth since the 1980s.
But Hooker's family didn't move there for the snowmobiling or the sled dog races. They moved there because his father is in the military, an assignment that took them to Palmer nine years ago. The family is originally from Little Washington, N.C., a small town in Eastern North Carolina. When they left for Palmer, C.J. gave his extended family that remained in the Tar Heel state a message: "I'm going to be back."
It happened even sooner than he might have thought. After a standout athletic (including four years of basketball, two All-Conference selections, three years of track, and one year of football) and academic (a class ranking of ninth out of 165, a 3.9 GPA on a 4.0 scale, and a 730 on the math portion of the SAT) career at Palmer High, he earned admission to UNC.
There was just one problem. Sports had been a big part of his life for many years, dating back to the times when he'd follow his father--who won a North Carolina high school state championship during his career at the now-defunct Bellhaven High--around looking for the next pickup basketball game.
But despite the increasing level of attention given to Alaskan basketball, including the Trajan Langdon/Carlos Boozer duo that enrolled eight miles down the road from Carolina, Hooker didn't generate enough recruiting attention to land a scholarship. Which led him, one fall evening, to the Smith Center and the annual junior varsity basketball tryouts.
It's not easy competition, as over 70 players usually try out for approximately 15 slots. Reputations mean very little--it takes a full week of quality play to make the squad and earn the right to play a handful of home games in the Smith Center every season. There is no TV time, little postgame media attention, and the constant quizzical look received from classmates who aren't even aware the Tar Heels field a junior varsity program.
To Hooker, it sounds great.
"Those were two of the best years of my life," he says. "The team was close and Coach (Doug) Wojcik was great. We had a lot of fun on that team."
JV participation is limited to freshmen and sophomores, so in the fall of 2003 Hooker faced a decision: end his basketball career or go through tryouts again and try to make the varsity as a walk-on. There was a completely new coaching staff in place, so he'd once again have to prove his value from scratch.
After another weeklong tryout, he got the call: C.J. Hooker was the newest North Carolina Tar Heel basketball player.
"I'm very competitive," he says. "I'll work as hard as anyone else on the floor and I think that's what they saw in me."
His selection meant his parents would suddenly be seeing a lot more of him as well. He's been a fixture on the Carolina bench for the past two seasons, meaning Connie and Jackie Hooker occasionally catch a glimpse of their son on some of the nationally-televised games. They made the journey--it's at least a 12-hour flight, counting connections, from Palmer's nearest airport (Anchorage) to RDU--to last year's Duke game and will be in town for senior day.
"It's been a great experience," Hooker says. "It's been so impressive to see the unbelievable amount of skill on this team. I'm never going to forget it."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. His book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores.
