Bates football senior captain Tony Hooks was honored Monday at the Gridiron Club of Greater Boston’s 2022 Bob Whelan College Football Awards Night. He is the recipient of the 76th annual Swede Nelson Award for sportsmanship, academics, and athletic achievement.
Hooks (New Rochelle, N.Y.) and the rest of the award-winners all gave speeches at the banquet, hosted in front of a packed house at the Burlington Marriott Hotel. In addition to Bates coaches and his family, Hooks’ high school coach Al Brown was in attendance at Monday’s banquet. Brown was the head men’s lacrosse coach and an assistant football coach at Bates from 1996-2000.
“I want to thank everyone in my support system, especially my family and coaches,” Hooks said in his speech. “I went from playing football in New York, to Rhode Island, to Maine, so the drives got longer, but my family was always by my side.”
A third team All-Region and first team All-NESCAC selection, Hooks was one of the top tacklers in all of NCAA Division III this season, ranking 11th in the country at 11.3 tackles per game. He led the NESCAC in tackles back-to-back seasons to cap off his collegiate career. On October 15th against Bowdoin, Hooks broke a more than 20-year old Bates record for tackles in one game, tallying 23 in a win over the Polar Bears.
A NESCAC All-Academic and College Sports Communicators Men’s Football Academic All-District® Team selection, Hooks sports a 3.7 GPA on a 4.0 scale. Hooks has served as president of the Bates College Investment Club. He led a Bone Marrow Drive on campus that registered 334 new donors in 2022. Hooks is a leader in the Bates Athletes of Color Coalition and a member of the Bates Athletics Agents of Change, which focuses on social injustices at the college, and in the community as a whole. He has also volunteered with Meals on Wheels America and the MLK Center in Newport, R.I.
Earlier this season, Hooks was named a semifinalist for the National Football Foundation’s William V. Campbell Trophy for scholar-athletes. It was announced on Monday that Hooks is once again a nominee for the Cliff Harris Award, which goes to the nation’s best small college linebacker.
Hooks is the second Bobcat ever to win the “Swede”, joining Mark Upton ’17, who earned the honor in 2016.
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