Iverson Hooks Is Back To 100% And Looks To Continue To Lead UAB's Receiving Room
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - September 11, 2025
A smile comes to Iverson Hooks face when asked if he could erase his tough times in football. It’s a small smile, sure, but a smile nonetheless.
You see, erasing the tough times for the UAB sophomore would mean three missed seasons, or technically 2 ½ seasons, ruined by severe knee injuries and another that he endured while being far from full strength. Erasing tough times would mean that he didn’t feel the warmth and support of his teammates while trying to work through the dark times of losing yet another football season. Erasing tough times just might mean he takes the good times for granted.
Nope, erasing tough times doesn’t interest the 5-foot-10, 175-pound wide receiver.
“Of course not,” Hooks said. “I mean, I'm not afraid to say there were nights I cried myself to sleep. When you’re mentally beat up, there’s going to be nights like that. God just blessed me, like, you just go to keep faith. You might feel bad that day, but the next day you got to get up and hit it with all you got. You never know if that’s gonna be the day that God shows you that you can really make it. You can never take a chance to let that slip away.”
No college football player is pain free at this time of the year or really at any point in the season. Bumps and bruises are part of the process. But Hooks is injury free and that’s a big deal. It shows on the field. Through two games, Hooks is tied for the team lead with Corri Milliner in catches with 11 and Hooks is second to Milliner with 145 receiving yards. Both shared the team lead with two receiving touchdowns. Hooks also has four punt returns for 43 yards.
But this isn’t about pure numbers. This is about the way he’s built those numbers. This is about him playing a way that’s has been his trademark from the time he first picked up a football.
“As you can see, he is really, really fast,” said Patrick Browning, his head coach at Pike Road High in Montgomery during Hooks’ final two high school seasons.
Hooks was never the biggest player on the field and never will be. He was often the fastest player. But, as a youngster, he also had something else. He had his older brother Dre Reynolds.
“He did everything for me,” Hooks said.
Reynolds was set to play football at Stillman College but decided to put his football efforts into Hooks.
“I seen something special in Strap at an early, early age,” Reynolds said. “I knew that this kid had the potential to be something special. And I knew that he didn't have nobody there to train him. He just needed the right guidance. I decided to come back home (to Reeltown, Alabama) and started training him and that’s how it went, man.”
Hooks estimates he was about eight or nine years old when his brother started training him. There were times, Hooks said, when his brother pulled him away from video games to work on football. Hooks said, for the most part, he went willingly.
“If he wanted me to go run with the parachute, he would make me get in the street and run,” Hooks said. “If he wanted to work with the sled, he would get me in the street. We had a whole squat (rack) outside the house. If I needed to lift weights, we would go lift weights.”
It wasn’t just physical, though. The mental part was equally important.
“Back then, Strap only played quarterback and free safety,” Reynolds said. “We’d get him in a room and we’d study offensive formations and we’d study defensive formations. He always studied safety. He always studied quarterback. It wasn't playing outside, it wasn't playing on video games. It was me and him in the house studying football. I knew when I played football, if you got that high IQ of the game, even with less talent, it can take you far. We built that up a long time ago. Throughout his little league career, leading up to middle school and high school, that’s where all the coaches bragged on Iverson. Even with him having 4.4, 4.3 speed, great athletic ability, the first thing coming out of high school coaches mouths was they couldn’t believe his football IQ.”
Hooks started at safety on the Reeltown High varsity as an 8th grader and was set to start at quarterback for the Class 2A school as a freshman in 2019. During the week leading up to the first game, however, he tore the ACL in his right knee and was out for the season. He grinded his way back on the field by the start of the sophomore season and was the starting quarterback on a Reeltown team that finished 13-2 and lost to Fyffe in the 2A state championship game in Auburn.
After that season, Hooks decided to take a step up in competition, enrolling at Class 5A Pike Road. He took over at quarterback for a talented team that included future Ole Miss and Ohio State and NFL running back Quinshon Judkins. On an team filled with playmakers on both sides of the ball, Hooks stood out.
“You know, I'm going to be honest, I knew he was fast but I’ll never forget, it’s burned into my memory,” Browning said. “We were playing Andalusia at Andalusia his junior year. We called a quarterback counter. He broke about 10 yards on the edge and you could see the safety had the angle. It was almost like he hit a knob (or) button to go faster. He went so fast down the sideline and scored. I told the coaches on the headset ‘I’ve never seen anything like that.’”
Two weeks later, in the fifth game Pike Road played that season, Hooks tore the ACL in his left knee during a 55-0 win over Tallassee. He left after halftime for what they thought were precautionary reasons. Pike Road improved to 6-0 that night, including a forfeit win the week before, and went on to finish 11-1.
“If he hadn’t tore his ACL that year, he was on pace to win Mr. Football,” Browning said. “He had already thrown for more than 1,500 yards and ran for another 600 or 700. He was impressive, man. He tore it against Tallassee and had like 400 yards at halftime. He was so strong, it didn’t feel to him like it was torn.”
For the second time, Hooks had to fight through the doubts of rehab. Once again, he came back stronger than ever. And his first game back had a little Hollywood feel to it. Pike Road opened the 2021 season against Class 6A McGill-Toolen team coming off a 11-win season. Judkins was out with an injury, which opened up more opportunities for Hooks. His video-game like numbers, according to a game story on Al.com, in the 76-51 Pike Road win included 16 carries for 307 yards with touchdowns of 66, 85, 86, 1 and 4 yards and 5-of-6 passing for 219 yards with touchdowns of 58, 76 and 55 yards.
That was an explosive start to an undefeated and explosive season for a Pike Road team outscored 14 opponents, 650-142, including a 51-14 win over Pleasant Grove in the Class 5A state championship game at Protective Stadium.
Hooks said he had around 25 college offers. A couple wanted him to play quarterback and some thought he was a defensive back. UAB signed him to play receiver. Even though he had never played receiver, Hooks made a positive impact during fall camp and looked on his way to finding a spot in the rotation. He caught one pass for 13 yards in a season-opening win over Alabama A&M but never played again that season. He was already in the transfer portal by the time the Blazers left for the Bahamas Bowl. After taking over the program, Trent Dilfer made a concerted effort to keep him and Hooks dropped out of the portal.
It didn’t take long for Hooks to show he fit into what Dilfer and offensive coordinator Alex Mortensen needed from him. He had three catches for 14 yards with a touchdown in the season-opening win over North Carolina A&T and followed that with six catches for 80 yards with another touchdown in a loss at Georgia Southern. In the next game, a loss to visiting Louisiana, Hooks’ season ended with another ACL tear to his left knee. The injury came as he was directed out of bounds following a short catch-and-run. He did not take a significant hit on the play.
“I actually wasn’t at that game, I was watching it live on TV,” Reynolds said. “I still remember it today,man. He had caught that bubble pass, got pushed out of bounds, he didn’t fall and he limped on the field. The coach called a timeout and he limped back to the sideline. When he took off the helmet, I just knew what it was. I just seen his body language and the look on his face. It was like, ‘Oh my God, this is three ACL injuries.’ How can you bounce back from three? I understood one or two but three?”
Admittedly, the third knee injury pushed Hooks into a dark place.
“That probably was the hardest one of them all,” Hooks said. “I didn't really wanna get up and go to rehab, I didn't wanna get up and keep going, but then I eventually had my little daughter. And the thing that (UAB football trainer Dan Springer) and Coach TD used to drill in my head was like, even if football is not what you wanna do no more, what if you wanna get up and run around and play around with your daughter? So it was just like, okay, you're right, I got the bigger things to worry about now. I can't be selfish no more, I had to put myself below my daughter. She comes first, so I mean, it was hard to get over that at a young age. But I had a team behind me, even if I didn't feel like coming in here, they were making sure that I got in here, even if they had to come pick me up.”
He was able to get back on the field last season but still wasn’t back to his old self. He caught 14 passes 179 yards with a touchdown catch against Navy. He also had a 71-yard pass completion that led to a touchdown against Memphis.
“I would say this was the longest it took (to get better),” Hooks said. “This injury probably took me about 12 or 14 months to get over. That's why last year I just wasn't myself. So, I mean, the fear of getting hurt wasn't in my head, but just the fear of not being myself was in my head. You know, my last injury, nobody touched me. It was just a step, so I can't help it. So I can't go into the thing thinking like, okay, if I step wrong, I'm gone. You know, so you just got to go out and play.”
He did just that in the spring and during all the offseason work. And he showed throughout fall camp that he was ready to start working toward a big season. All that carried into the first two weeks, even though he hasn’t been perfect. Hooks showed his speed with a 51-yard catch-and-run for a touchdown in the first half against Navy but also made a critical mistake with a lost fumble in the second half.
“Coach TD, he just told me I had to take this offseason like the most important I ever been through, because I was coming off of that injury,” Hooks said. “I had to get back to myself. So when spring came, I just hit the ground with like the right mindset. The same with (fall camp). I just practiced all the way through every practice, one day at a time and then game time, it just came to me. I would say probably everything was mental preparation, just confidence coming off that injury. I didn't know if I was ever gonna be the same. Some people just don't come back. God blessed me with the ability to come back and be faster, be quicker.”