Oct. 22, 2009
By Mark Honbo
Athletics Media Relations
(Originally appeared in October 17 issue of Aggie Gameday, the UC Davis football game program.
While most parents use phrases like "onward and upward" or "above and beyond" merely as figurative words encouragement for their son's or daughter's career, Tori Hooper's parents suggested them quite literally.
As a result, the UC Davis women's volleyball outside hitter began training toward her pilot's license during the summer prior to her senior year. Hooper, who has 23 hours of training thus far, temporarily set aside her instruction to concentrate on her final volleyball season. But her plan is to immediately resume her training after the season is over, have completed her written and practical tests before the end of the 2009 calendar year, then have earned her slot in the Air Force Reserve by the time she graduates in June with degrees in international relations and cultural anthropology.
"I really enjoy the challenge of flying," says Hooper. "I trained every day for four weeks in July. It was a brand-new physical task. I had been through every type of athletic situation you can be in, but getting up there and flying was a new challenge. It was ready for it and took it head-on."
The decisions to earn her pilot's license and to enter the Air Force Reserve did not come haphazardly to the 21-year-old. She lives in foothills town of Cameron Park, where many neighbors have airplane hangars on their properties. The streets in the Cameron Airpark Estates are extra-wide, allowing residents to use them as taxiways between their own homes and their neighborhood airport, where Hooper trained during the summer.
Furthermore, service in the U.S. Air Force is virtually a family tradition. Her father Guy recently retired after 20 years as an Air Force pilot. Rebecca, her mother, served 25 years as a nurse in the Air Force. Additionally, two of her uncles, her aunt and her grandfather served in the USAF.
In fact, during one of her training missions, Hooper landed a plane at Mather Field, the former Air Force Base near Rancho Cordova. When she excitedly told her mother of her achievement, Hooper learned that she had become the third generation in the family to land a plane at Mather.
"I grew up on Air Force bases, so it has always been in my blood to fly," Hooper says. "It's part of who I am. When I was younger, I'd listen to jets taking off and flying overhead."
So inundated with the Air Force culture was Hooper growing up, that she admits an early reluctance to the air service. ""It was almost overwhelming for a while that I wanted to escape it. But now I'm happy to say that I'm able to embrace it."
With a degree from a four-year institution, Hooper will enter the Reserve as an officer (second lieutenant). She then will complete basic training, officer training and additional pilot training. As she faces these additional rigors, Hooper is confident that the experience of being a student-athlete will work to her advantage.
"A pilot has to have a hardcore, grind-it-out mindset," she says. "You have to have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder. Say there are five pilot slots. If you don't work hard, you won't get one of those five slots. It's an extremely competitive world."
"I've been through conditioning. I've done four years of double days. I'll know how to put on the gear, go out there and do the work. Not everyone has been pushed the way student-athletes have. So I'm definitely thankful for that experience, because it has mentally and physically prepared me."
Even Hooper's current volleyball season parallels what's ahead in her flight career. After three years as a middle blocker, she switched to outside hitter this season, where her size (6-0) and lateral movement is better suited. Hooper says she has enjoyed the challenge of developing her skills as a pin hitter. Similarly, as a Reserve pilot, her hopes are to fly KC-10 air-to-air refuelers at nearby Travis AFB. But if that doesn't work out, she's eager to fly other types of aircraft and missions - even fighter jets on active duty.
"I like to push the envelope and see what I can do. That's something I've learned from playing volleyball at UC Davis," Hooper says. "Once you think you're done, you learn that can actually keep going further. Once you think you have limits, something in you will push you to go beyond them. It can come from within you, or it comes from your teammates and your coaches. It's all around you, but you never really know it until you experience it."
