His athletic career began in third grade when he joined the cross-country team at Horizon Christian School in Indianapolis. Kyle, his father, consented to serve as an assistant coach because he is a local teacher, and he then followed his son’s career through middle and high school. Cole competed for his Indy Gold club team at the 2010 Cross Country Coaches Youth National Championship in Lexington, Kentucky, where he won his age division in 11:19.50 over the three-kilometer course. Because he was also a math teacher at Cathedral High School, his coach, Jim Nohl, applied the same training philosophy he had used in elementary school but altered it with a more statistical approach.
Cole started growing his long hair as a freshman at Cathedral, where he established his trademark closing quickness, so the Sampson comparisons were obvious when he started winning. Hocker’s feud with Centrowitz began quietly enough last December at a competition in California. Centrowitz won a low-key 5,000-meter race in 13:32.92 by.03 seconds over Hocker. The Ducks’ next generation was close behind the current heroes. Teare found a training partner in Hocker in 2019, which helped him ascend the NCAA ranks. When the Oregon facility closed last spring, Hocker returned home to Indianapolis and spent the majority of the summer training alone.
The Meteoric Rise
He traveled to Boulder, Colorado, and joined Teare for a lengthy run on Magnolia Road at a height of more than 8,000 feet above sea level, when the pace rose to 5:20 per mile. By the end of the race, it was only the two of them. Teare and Hocker re-joined the team in August and concluded that staying on the track would offer them the best chance of winning an NCAA team title, so they spent the fall conducting short time trials in an empty Hayward Field under the cautious eye of coach Ben Thomas.
Teare and Hocker ran 3:50.39 and 3:50.55, respectively, to break the old NCAA indoor mile mark of 3:52.01 established by 17-time NCAA champion Edward Cheserek on Feb. 12 in Fayetteville, Ark. A month later, on the same Arkansas track, Hocker upset Teare in the 3,000m in the NCAA indoor championships, his second national title of the day after winning the mile 90 minutes earlier.
Ascend to Fame
Hocker entered the outdoor season with zeal, but new problems surfaced quickly. Fans saw Hocker compete against Notre Dame’s Yared Nuguse, the 2019 NCAA outdoor champion in the 1,500 meters who skipped the indoor season to help the Irish cross country team finish second at the NCAA cross country finals. Nuguse won in 3:35.96, and Hocker came in third in 3:36.47, a personal best just behind teammate Teare. At the 2021 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships, he won the 1500 meters in 3:35.35, outkicking NCAA mark holder Yared Nuguse.
He finished fourth in the 5000 meters with a time of 13:18.95. In the 2020 US Olympic Trials, Hocker won the 1500m final, defeating both Matthew Centrowitz and Yared Nuguse. He did not meet the Olympic qualifying time, but due to his global ranking, he was still entitled to compete. Hocker qualified for the 1500-meter semifinals at the 2020 Olympic Games after finishing fourth in his heat in 3:36.16. Then, in the semifinals, he ran a personal best of 3:33.87 to take second in his heat and qualify for the final.
