Destinee Hooker USA Volleyball player of the year
COLORADO SPRINGS, USA, December 10, 2012 – Destinee Hooker has
been named the USA Volleyball Indoor Female Athlete of the Year
for 2012.
Hooker helped USA secure their second consecutive Olympic Games
silver medal at the 2012 London Games. They finished with a 7-1
record, losing only to Brazil in the gold-medal match. Hooker
earned the Olympic Games Best Spiker award with a 0.379 hitting
efficiency.
Hooker also ranked as the second best scorer at the Olympics
with 161 points, averaging 5.96 points per set and starting all
27 sets. She added 0.78 blocks per set at the Olympics to finish
as the fourth best blocker.
Although she was injured through much of the 2012 FIVB World
Grand Prix, Hooker was dominant for the brief time she was on
court. She scored 101 points in her six games.
Meanwhile, Kristin Richards Hildebrand, an alternate on both the
2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic Women's Volleyball Teams, was
selected as Most Improved Player of the year.
During the FIVB World Grand Prix, Richards Hildebrand started
four of the five Final Round matches in addition to two of the
three matches in the third preliminary round weekend.
She was named the most valuable player of the 2012 Pan American
Cup after helping the U.S. claim the gold medal for the first
time since 2003. In the gold-medal match against Brazil's
Olympic-laden team, Richards Hildebrand scored a season-high 35
points with 32 kills, two aces and a block to finish the
tournament as the Best Scorer with 128 points. |