Daniel Hooker returned to his alma mater at Western Carolina in the athletics department in 2004 as a Director of Media Relations. He was promoted to Assistant Athletics Director for Media Relations in December 2007, and in January 2024, he was elevated to the title Associate Athletics Director for Media Relations.
In addition to overseeing the day-to-day operations of the WCU Athletics Media Relations Office, Hooker is also the main sport contact for Catamount football and baseball, as well as the men’s & women’s golf programs. He is also a part of the Western Carolina Athletics Senior Staff. He also handles most aspects of the Catamount Sports Network and helps coordinate WCU’s live event streaming on ESPN, providing play-by-play for football, volleyball, basketball, baseball, and softball.
Hooker was nominated for Western Carolina University's 2024-25 Paul A. Reid Distinguished Service Award for administrative staff and also for the 2024-25 Star Staff Award.
Prior to returning to Cullowhee in 2004, Hooker spent four years in Charleston, S.C., working for two minor league sports franchises. He started in the Lowcountry with the Charleston Swamp Foxes arenafootball2 (af2) team, serving as the Director of Media & Public Relations for three years. He also worked one season for the Charleston Lowgators of the National Basketball Development League (NBDL) as an Account Executive and Game Day Operations Assistant.
He got his start in athletics working a pair of internships, first with the Thomasville Hi-Toms – a Coastal Plains League, a collegiate summer wooden bat franchise based in central North Carolina. He also worked as the Public Affairs Assistant with the Southern Conference for the 2001-02 season where he was the primary contact for women’s soccer, volleyball and wrestling, while also assisting with football and men’s basketball.
Hooker also take turns behind the microphone in helping deliver play-by-play and color analysis alongside “Voice of the Catamounts,” Gary Ayers during football, men’s basketball season, and on the baseball call. His radio experience began in 1997 as a student announcer on WWCU-FM in Cullowhee where he served as an on-air personality for daily shifts, as well as helped start a weekly, interactive sports talk show which covered Catamount athletics, “Sports Talk LIVE.” He continued that role with “In the Litterbox,” on WWCU through the spring of 2009.
His sportscasting experience includes broadcasting Catamount women’s basketball, Catamount baseball, a season as the play-by-play announcer for the Thomasville Hi-Toms and two seasons as a color analyst for the Charleston Swamp Foxes. He also spent one season on the sidelines during the Catamount Sports Network’s coverage of Catamount football in 2001.
Hooker got his start in sports information in the mid-1990s by doing statistics for Eastern Randolph High football and baseball, while also working as a sports stringer for his hometown newspaper, The Liberty News. While a student at Western Carolina, Hooker served as the sports editor for the school newspaper, the Western Carolinian, for two years after two years as the assistant. He also served as a student assistant with the WCU Sports Information Office all four years, working under predecessors like Steve White, Craig Wells, Jody Jones, and Mike Cawood.
A member of WCU’s Honors College, Hooker is a 2001 cum laude graduate of Western Carolina University where he earned a BS in Communications, while pursuing a double-major in Sport Management with a concentration in Sports Information. He is a member of the North Carolina Collegiate Sports Information Association (NCCSIA) and the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA).
His 2017 WCU Football media guide received second-place national honors at the FCS level at the 2017 CoSIDA Convention in Washington, D.C., with both the 2018 and 2019 media guides being awarded “First in the Nation” at the NCAA FCS level from CoSIDA.
