LONDON – The coach insists that this is not a team of Destinee.
Then Hugh McCutcheon catches himself and says, “Hey, listen, if she was high jumping right now I’d be very upset.”
Destinee Hooker is still high jumping in a sense, but she doesn’t flop. She whacks volleyballs with killing velocity, but her fingernails, grown out and painted, don’t feel a thing.
“I”ve never cracked one,” she said Thursday. “They’re pretty thick.”
So is the confidence of a U.S. women’s volleyball team that swept South Korea in the Olympic semifinals, 25-20, 25-22 and 25-22.
Difficult to believe, but the Americans have never won an Olympic women’s volleyball pennant. They were runners-up in 1984 – Flo Hyman, in Long Beach – and in 2008.
There’s always been a machine in the way, like the three consecutive Cuban gold medal winners, or the Soviets.
The machine that can handle Hooker has not been designed. On Thursday she was 21 for 32 in spiking, a 60.61 percentage.
She came into this game as the No. 3 scorer in the tournament. The top scorer was Yeon-Koung Kim of South Korea, and she was 18 for 37 at the net, mostly with Hooker and Foluke Akinradwo in her face.
“I remember when we first put her into a game, in a Grand Prix tournament somewhere, and we were down 24-21,” said McCutcheon, who coached the U.S. men to a gold medal four years ago. “We won 26-24. I don’t think she’s been off the court too much since then.
“It’s like having Michael Jordan as a sophomore. She was very raw. She was high jumping and playing football and it’s hard to do one thing well when you’re doing two. But she’s learned a lot and put the work in. And she relishes that moment of competition.”
Hooker is 6-foot-3 with a 43-inch vertical leap. She can touch 11 feet, three inches. She was the Texas high school state champion in the high jump in 2004 and 2005, out of San Antonio’s Southwest High.
Properly warmed up, she became one of the best athletes in University of Texas history, without exaggeration. Three times she won the NCAA high jump title, and she was the most outstanding player in the NCAA volleyball tournament.
Her sister, Marshevet, was an Olympian, too, finishing fifth in the 200 meters in Beijing. She also stocked Bevo’s trophy case, with NCAA titles in the 100 and in the 4×100 relay. But Marshevet took 2012 off to have a baby, a girl who is due in October.
“She’s always been my favorite athlete growing up,” Destinee said. “She was always there for me and now I’m there for her – she’s sort of living her dream through me. We Skype each other every day. She just tells me to go out there and dominate, represent our name.”
Had she been interested, Destinee conceivably could have made the U.S. women’s Olympic basketball team, which is already unfairly dominant. She averaged 22.3 points, 16.2 rebounds and 7.3 blocks in high school. Just in her spare time.
And if McCutcheon really wants to hallucinate, he could consider that Hooker might be playing for Germany. She was born in Frankfurt while her father Ricky, a former basketball star at St. Mary’s of Texas, was playing there professionally.
Ricky is a pastor and once ran San Antonio’s School of Excellence, the largest charter school in the area. Both Marshavet and Destinee were honor students.
Hooker is engaged to Steve Coulter, who played basketball briefly for Concordia-Irvine and lives in Tustin.
Although Destinee only played volleyball at Texas when score was being kept, and did not develop her game in the off-seasons, she was still gifted and steadfast enough to make Team USA.
“She’s very special athletically but she didn’t know much about volleyball,” McCutcheon said. “She showed flashes, but it’s not about flashes. It’s not about doing things nine times out of 10, it’s about 99 of 100.”
Right now it looks like about 49 or 50. Hooker sustained enough flashes to become MVP of the world Grand Prix last September.
McCutcheon took pains to call Destinee “one-sixth, or really one-twelfth of the puzzle here.” And that’s true.
Jordan Larson fires bullets at the net, too, and Lindsay Berg, the team captain who gritted her way through a sprained ankle Thursday, lofts juicy passes for everyone.
“I’m so lucky to be able to set somebody like that,” Berg said. “It’s easy and it’s incredible. But our whole team is like that.”
When the points get tighter in Saturday’s gold medal game, the U.S. will realize where the pie sliced. It will go to the woman with the hammer, and the nails.
Contact the writer: mwhicker@OCRegister.com. Follow on Twitter: @mwhickerOCR
