Now in the midst of his 21st season as head coach of the Pioneer women’s soccer team, Jeff Hooker brings a wealth of experience to the program, drawing from his tenure with the U.S. National Soccer Team and a professional career spanning 10 years.
“As far as knowledge of the game, understanding of the game and staying on top of different techniques and training, he’s really one of our top coaches,” said Ron Grahame, DU’s assistant vice chancellor and senior associate athletics director. “He really knows what’s going on in the game and how to utilize the techniques that are necessary to be successful.”
Hooker joined the Pioneer coaching staff in 1992, becoming the third head coach of the women’s soccer program. Today, he is the longest serving active coach at DU and has led the Pioneers to a 284-102-37 record in almost 21 seasons.
Before he joined the Pioneer community as a coach, however, Hooker compiled an impressive list of accomplishments as a player.
“I was always a player,” said Hooker. “I got to do a lot of traveling around the world because of soccer. In high school, I lived in Germany my sophomore year, and I went to a German-American school and played soccer there.”
At the end of his senior year of high school, Hooker said he faced a tough decision in choosing between pursuing soccer or baseball. After an invitation to play in the 1983 FIFA World Youth Championship with the U.S. under-19 soccer team, Hooker chose the soccer route, which led him to playing on the U.S. national team in the Olympics the following year in Los Angeles.
“It was great [playing in the Olympics]. I was very young; I think I was 18. Most of the guys were a lot older. We spent that whole year and a half prior traveling everywhere around the world. Not only did I get to do that, but I got to play in front of family and friends,” said Hooker, who is a native of Walnut, Calif.
Interspersed with his career with the national team, Hooker played three seasons at UCLA between 1983 and 1987, playing in 51 games and tallying 20 goals and 11 assists.
After three seasons with professional teams in California from 1986 to 1989, it was Hooker’s professional career that brought him to Denver in 1991, when he began a five-year career with the Colorado Foxes of the American Professional Soccer League.
In 1992, however, the Foxes’ head coach, Dave Dir, received a call from DU, who was in search of a women’s soccer head coach. Dir said he’d send the man over who he felt was best for the job and scheduled an interview for Hooker, who said he refused to attend.
“I had never wanted to be a coach,” said Hooker. “But he [Dir] said he was going to fine me $100 a day until I showed up, so the next day I went, and the next day I was hired.”
More than 20 years later, Hooker has transformed the Pioneer women’s soccer team into one of the top programs in the conference, boasting five Sun Belt Conference regular season titles and seven SBC tournament titles in the past 11 years. Between 1994 and 2010, Hooker accumulated eight conference coach of the year awards.
Now, in the team’s first season as a member of the highly competitive Western Athletic Conference, the Pioneers enter the conference tournament tied for first with a No. 2 seed, riding an 18-game unbeaten streak.
“He is very even keel in his approach to both training and games,” said assistant coach Kris Peat. “He never gets too high after big games, but never gets too low after losses. Jeff’s ability to see things in real time, and know what a particular game needs, is a great asset for our program. It gives him the ability to put our players in a position to be successful.”
After more than two decades with the same program and more than 300 career wins under his belt, Hooker said one of his main tasks is to continue finding ways to challenge his players and the other members of his coaching staff to grow the program.
While his extensive history as a player provides a solid understanding of the game, Hooker said coaching is a completely different concept.
“Coaching is just a lot different, because you don’t have as much control,” said Hooker. “You can’t step onto the field to do things, score goals and keep the ball out of the net. It’s a totally different mindset, but it’s one that I’ve enjoyed.”
