Editor's note: The following story is part of a series highlighting the members of the 2024 Washington State Athletic Hall of Fame Class. The Hall of Fame induction took place Sept. 6-7 at the Washington State University campus.
During her recruiting visit, Alissa Brooks-Johnson had an awkward moment.
"I'm in (head coach) Rick Sloan's office," Brooks-Johnson recalled, "and he stared right at my shoes and says, 'What are you wearing?'"
"I was so nervous," Brooks-Johnson said laughing.
"Uh, purple shoes," she managed to reply. "Purple is my favorite color. He goes, ‘That's going to need to change.'"
While the color of Brooks-Johnson shoes changed, what didn't was her competitive fire.
Brooks-Johnson's fire was sparked from a tiny spot on a map, the unincorporated community of Doty (population approximately 250), where she excelled in volleyball, basketball and track at Pe Ell High School.
"I graduated high school with about 27 kids in my class," Brooks-Johnson added. "I was very into athletics because in a small town that's what we could rely on."
Her mother, who was a track and field athlete herself and served as a coach for her, had her attend a track camp at WSU for three years.
"It was a great camp," she said. "That helped me get a lot of experience and meet a lot of people."
One of those people was Sloan, who remembered Brooks-Johnson from camp.
"I'm a competitor and always going to be up for a challenge," she said. "I love being the underdog. It fills my drive."
Brooks-Johnson served notice during her freshman year, finishing runner-up in the heptathlon at the Pac-12 Championships.
"When I did get runner up, I was like 'Oh my God, I can do this,'" Brooks-Johnson recalled. "That was a validating time for me. Hey, this is my first year doing this and I'm runner up, I think I can actually get somewhere with this."
Sloan retired after Brooks-Johnson's freshman year and Wayne Phipps took over the reins of the program.
Phipps was excited with what he inherited.
"It didn't take long to see this was someone pretty special," Phipps said.
"The mentality of a heptathlete is they like to do more than one thing and Alissa, coming from a small school, did everything," Phipps said. "Her athletic IQ when it came to learning some of the events was helpful and her greater athleticism helps you in a variety of different events.
"What you saw performance-wise her freshman year, it was just a hint, a glimpse of what potential she had," Phipps added.
Brooks-Johnson showed herself and everyone else how her potential equated to a championship as a sophomore at the Pac-12 Championships at UCLA.
"Event after event I killed it," Brooks-Johnson recalled of her performance that weekend.
Brooks-Johnson set personal bests after the first day of events: the 100m, high jump, shot put and 200m. She found herself in third place heading into Sunday and the final three events: long jump, javelin and, the final event, the 800m.
"As she continued to go event from event, you could tell the level of curiosity and concern from other coaches," Phipps said, adding, "Her two best events were her last two events."
"I got to the 800 and won that event and looked up at the score and it said 5,800," Brooks-Johnson said. "And I was like, 'Oh my God.'"
Brooks-Johnson won with a 5,803 point total, nearly 200 points better than the runner-up. On that final day, she posted lifetime-best marks in all three events: she long jumped 18-feet 11 1/4 inches (5.77m), threw the javelin 146-10 (44.75m), and ended the day with an 800m time of 2 minutes, 13.94 seconds.
In all, she set personal records in all seven of the heptathlon events. In addition, her first-day and final point totals were also personal-bests.
"That whole weekend the highlight," Phipps said, "the fun and excitement of that heptathlon and to see how excited she was."
Calling her title the "happiest moment" of her time at WSU, Brooks-Johnson looked at it as validation from coming from a small town to reach a pinnacle of her sport.
"Being able to call myself Pac-12 champion is the best feeling of my career," she said.
A medical redshirt year denied Brooks-Johnson the opportunity to defend her title, but the competitive fire that propelled her at the beginning of her career would continue to burn for her final two years at WSU.
As a junior at the 2017 Pac-12 Championships at Corvallis, Brooks-Johnson captured her second title with a season-high 5,638 points and was in position to defend in 2018.
"My senior year, I was more nervous about it because I had a competitor who wanted to beat me the whole season," Brooks-Johnson said.
There was drama at Stanford, the site of the 2018 Pac-12 Championships.
Brooks-Johnson started strong with PRs in the first five events to hold the lead and threw a season-best javelin distance of 136-6 (41.60m). However, UCLA's Kendall Gustafson took the overall heptathlon lead after throwing the javelin 152-9 (46.56m) bringing her six-event total to 5122, 40 points ahead of Brooks-Johnson's 5082.
But the final event, the 800m, was Brooks-Johnson’s strongest and she showed why, running a time of 2 minutes 14.82 seconds while Gustafson's time was 2:24.39, providing Brooks-Johnson 131 more points.
The title defense was complete.
In all, Brooks-Johnson had lifetime-best marks in five of the seven events. Her finally tally of 5,977 points is second-best in WSU's all-time records, trailing only Diana Pickler's 6,205 points tallied at the 2007 NCAA Championships.
Brooks-Johnson is one of only five, three-time champions in the event in conference history.
Her presence was also felt nationally, capturing All-America First-Team honors each of her final two seasons, finishing sixth at the 2017 and 2018 NCAA Championships. She also garnered All-American Honorable Mention honors in 2015 for both the heptathlon and 400m hurdles.
In addition to her multiple championships, Brooks-Johnson graduated with honors, majoring in apparel merchandising design and textile and sport management.
On the field and in the classroom, Brooks-Johnson excelled at whatever challenge was put in front of her. From track camps, to purple shoes on her recruiting visit, to multiple championships and honors, her experience at WSU has filled her with gratitude.
"It helped me grow and believe in myself," she said. "Everyone was so welcoming. It helped me trust in myself, trust in other people, and to rely on other people. I am more than thankful for my coaches, and my teammates and friends I made there because they are all like family to me."
