Asante “Tiger” Hooker didn’t tell anybody he was going to do it. He just went for it.
After all, he is a self-proclaimed exhibitionist, and he wanted to give the 93,000 LSU faithful a show they would remember.
Starting at the end zone in Tiger Stadium, Hooker sprinted toward the opposite end zone, planted his feet and flipped.
Then he flipped again. And again. And again.
Hooker’s dizzying acrobatics lasted all the way until his feet were planted on the Eye of the Tiger at midfield.
“I was very alarmed because there’s all types of presentations and things that go on the field,” said LSU spirit coordinator and cheerleading coach Pauline Zernott. “When he did it, I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, I hope he doesn’t tumble into anybody.'”
But Hooker wouldn’t have noticed the impediments to his march down the field. He was focused.
In his ears, Tiger Stadium fell deathly silent until his feet connected to the turf and stayed there.
“In the stadium, it’s a feeling like no other,” Hooker said. “Once I stop and land, everybody yells. It’s exciting.”
After he finished, Zernott gave a nervous look to Associate Athletics Director Eddie Nunez, who oversees things on the field. But Nunez looked like he was enjoying himself.
So goes the true effect Hooker has on people who see his dazzling aerial displays.
With the 2011 football season in the books, Hooker has taken his airshow to the PMAC, where he somersaults down the floor during basketball timeouts to the delight of fans.
“It’s a big thrill. I’m a big showoff,” Hooker said. “I guess it’s my downfall, but it’s a good thing, too. I just love performing in front of people. It’s what I do.”
To be technical, Hooker hasn’t mastered the art of flipping, but rather “tumbling,” which he learned from his mother — Maxine Franklin, a former gymnast — when he was 5 years old.
“I taught him everything I knew, and he just picked up everything along the way on his own,” Franklin said. “He’s just a quick learner, and he did everything I did.”
As Hooker grew, so did his skill. He learned more advanced tumbling techniques as he got older, and soon he could perform complex flips even his mother couldn’t keep up with.
But the combination of Hooker’s newfound skill, youth and his tendency toward showmanship caught up to him one day.
His adversary took the form of a Greyhound bus. And Hooker was determined to perform a backflip off it.
He didn’t finish the flip.
“It left a scar on my leg when glass went straight into my knee,” Hooker said as he displayed the two- or three-inch scar below his knee. “My mom said if I ever got hurt, she wouldn’t take me to the hospital. But she took me that day.”
Franklin didn’t hesitate when she saw the injury.
“That hurt me to my heart,” Franklin said. “I thought he wasn’t ever going to flip again, to be honest. But he overcame that.”
It’s not the first time Hooker hurt himself tumbling, and he said it probably won’t be the last. When his head is consistently the closest part of his body to the ground, injury is just something he deals with.
Hooker loves tumbling. He does it everywhere. And it’s started to get him noticed.
“When people really started to notice is when he tumbled out to the Eye of the Tiger,” Zernott said. “And it just kind of escalated from there — which is great.”
More important than entertaining large crowds of people, Hooker has turned his abilities into a means of paying for school.
Hooker had never been part of a cheerleading squad before, but his abilities landed him a scholarship at Faulkner University, a two-year school near his Mobile, Ala., home.
The 22-year-old junior transferred to LSU this year, where he’s majoring in art in the classroom and perfecting his daredevil art in a purple and gold cheerleading uniform.
His tumbling skills require more than just athleticism, though Hooker doesn’t fall short in that department.
While he stands just 5-foot-7, Hooker said he can dunk a basketball on a regulation hoop.
But what really allows Hooker to perform his craft is his fearlessness. Or, according to his mother, his passion.
“Your heart has to be in it,” Franklin said. “When you’re flipping, it’s like you’re soaring. … It’s a passion. If you’ve got your heart into soaring like that, flipping is a wonderful feeling.”
 
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Contact Luke Johnson at [email protected]