Hard work pays off for Camden Hook

Incoming HSE freshman adds AAU Scholastic Duals victory to resume

By RICHIE HALL
sports@readthereporter.com

Camden Hook has been wrestling for two-thirds of his life, and it has certainly taken him places.

The incoming Hamilton Southeastern freshman has won numerous championships and honors over the years and added to that list with his performance at the AAU Scholastic Duals, which took place June 24 to 29 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Representing both himself and two teams, Hook finished 21-0 at the Duals. He wrestled on the middle school Team Indiana AAU and the high school Indiana Smackdown team, where he was named All-American gold.

If that wasn’t enough, Hook competed as an individual in the middle school bracket and won the national championship at 126 pounds.

Hook and his coach, Tomas Gutierrez, spoke with The Reporter at the Contenders Academy location in Noblesville just a few days after Hook returned home from Florida. The success he had there was a far cry from his first-ever tournament: the Nuway Mayhem Tournament. Hook said he went 0-4 and “scored two points that entire tournament.”

“I learned that I needed to get a whole lot better,” said Hook.

Hook began wrestling at age 5 and joined Contenders when he was 10. He began to notice improvement “probably four years ago when I was at Contenders for a little bit and I started getting better.”

“Work ethic and just understanding that it’s not going to happen overnight,” said Gutierrez. “Sometimes people expect results the first or second day that they come into practice, but as coaches here at Contenders, we try and not focus so much on the results all the time and talk about the journey and growing as a wrestler and as a person. That’s when they start to see those results. It’s not always right away.”

This year alone, Hook has won several tournaments, including the Indiana State Wrestling Association’s Greco-Roman championship and the Central Regional championship, which took place in Louisville. He was also the runner-up at the Freestyle and Folkstyle tournaments.

Wrestling has already been Hook’s passport to see the world. During his career, Hook got the chance to visit several European cities on a wrestling trip.

“This guy on Facebook reached out to my dad and wanted to take a team,” said Hook. “We ended up signing up and getting on the plane and going over there.”

The trip included stops at Copenhagen, Denmark; Oslo, Norway; Stockholm, Sweden; Tallinn, Estonia; Helsinki, Finland, Riga, Latvia and Frankfurt, Germany. Hook called the trip “pretty eye-opening.”

“A lot of people there wrestle completely different than we do her,” said Hook. “It’s more like a lifestyle for them and they’re just all about it and dedicated. They don’t really do much except for train, and when they train, they don’t train like forever, they just train hard shorter.”

In addition to wrestling, Hook has dipped into the world of kickboxing. His father, John Hook, fought professionally in MMA and taught his son boxing at age 6.

“For the longest time, he stopped teaching me because I started getting in trouble at school,” said Camden Hook. “He told me that wasn’t okay. First week at school, somebody took my crayons, I started punching them.”

Camden eventually settled down and began entering fights when he was older; his first fight was set up with Iron Horse Productions from Greenfield.

“I was 12 and I started off fighting a kid from Tennessee,” said Hook. “I don’t know how the fight got set up. I think the promoter used to help promote fights for my dad when he started off.”

Hook won that fight and a few others. He currently holds a 5-0 record in kickboxing matches.

“Maybe wrestling was a little bit better because we don’t fight people,” said Gutierrez. “More controlled chaos.”

In addition, Hook is a straight-A student and a member of the National Honor Society. He already has built quite a resume as he enters high school, both academically and in wrestling.

“I’m looking forward to different training opportunities and wrestling higher-level kids more often, making the next jump, because after that’s college,” said Hook.