Sidney Hooper, 30, started playing softball at the tender age of four.
By the time she was a sophomore at Walker Valley High School in Bradley County, she was a stand-out pitcher/third-baseman and a Times Free Press prep softball Player of the Year.
“Perfect practice makes perfect,” was her mantra. It was a philosophy instilled in her by her dad, Kinny, a former Ole Miss football stalwart (1979-1982) and professional softball player.
“I learned a lot from my dad,” Hooper says. “Success (in sports) was measured in effort and accountability.”
Today, Hooper is the tickets operations manager for the Chattanooga Lookouts, a team on the precipice of opening a new stadium in 2026 in the South Broad Street District of Chattanooga. She says the excitement within the Cincinnati Reds Double-A minor league affiliate is palpable.
“It’s a once-in-a-career thing,” Hooper says. “And for some a never-in-a- career thing.”
There was a time in her life when moving back to southeastern Tennessee, where she attended middle school and high school, was not part of her life plan.
After high school, Hooper played softball at Austin Peay State University and later circled back to work at her alma mater’s athletics ticketing office. After that, she worked in ticket sales at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte before moving back to Southeast Tennessee in 2021.
Her dad, a star athlete at Bradley Central High School before attending Ole Miss, is revered in the Cleveland, Tennessee area. Like many young adults, Hooper wanted to spread her wings in a new place.
For a time while after working at UNC-Charlotte, she got out of the sports business altogether, and spent more than a year as a nanny to two children whose parents were in the military.
But some of her high school friends in Tennessee wanted her to “come home” so badly that they relentlessly sent her links to job opportunities, she says. When a job came open with the Lookouts in September 2021, she applied and was hired within days.
When the Lookouts begin play this month it will mark Hooper’s fourth season with the club. She says her job managing ticket operations stirs her competitive side. She has a goals-oriented personality and expanding the audience for Lookouts baseball is part of her job.
Unlike college sports, where ticket sales are often linked to team performance, minor-league baseball teams are more about creating a fun atmosphere with lots of family activities, she says.
“The biggest blessing for minor league baseball is that people are coming out for the experience, the memories they make coming to the field,” Hooper says. “We get to provide an awesome show — (like) fireworks with their family on a Friday night.”
Even though the Lookouts will play their last season in the 25-year-old AT&T Stadium in 2025, the staff is already looking ahead to 2026 when the club — and the city — will be energized by a new ballpark.
Hooper says she likes the esprit de corps within the Lookouts management as they gear up for the move.
“I like the team atmosphere,” she says. “You are out here 17 hours a day for 69 games a year. It’s a lot of work.”
When she’s not at the ball park, Hooper volunteers with Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Greater Chattanooga. Her “little sister” goes to Red Bank middle school and is involved in sports there.
Meanwhile, Hooper has settled into life in Chattanooga, where she lives within walking distance of AT&T field.
“It’s cool being back here,” she says. “I swore up and down I would never move home. But I think there’s a different outlook on it now that I’m older. People move home all the time.
“… I’ve found my little community here in Chattanooga.”
Sidney Hooper
* Age: 30
* Hometown: Charlotte, North Carolina
* Job: Chattanooga Lookouts, Tickets Operations Manager
* Education: Walker Valley High School, Austin Peay State University