Head Coach, Hodding Carter

Hodding Carter was born and raised in Greenville, Mississippi—the son and grandson of newspapermen.  He spent most of his childhood swimming and playing in drainage ditches and eventually went to Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.  He swam on the schools Division III National Championship team.  His senior year, finally realizing his swimming career might be nearing its end, he swam on 2 championship relays and was runner-up in the 200 freestyle at Nationals.

After graduating, Hodding immediately entered the US Peace Corps and served for 2 ½ years in Kenya, teaching English and assisting with rural development projects.  On returning from Kenya, Hodding held a series of odd jobs, from waiting tables to presidential campaign spy (on behalf of Mike Dukakis) and working publicity for the New York Urban Development Corporation.  In 1989, he became a fact checker at Esquire magazine with eth warning that he would never be able to write for the magazine.  His first article appeared in Esquire 9 months later about swimming with Mark Spitz during the Olympic champ’s ill-fated comeback bid.  He has been writing professionally ever since.

In 1990, he took a job at M magazine as a staff writer under the guidance of the legendary Clay Felker and was allowed to report on nearly everything, from Governor Ann Richards to a visit with the world’s most wanted heroin producer in the Burmese jungle to getting second place at the Louisiana Oyster Eating Championships in Cutoff, Louisiana (he ate 135 in 15 minutes, garnering 2nd place).

In 1992, he retraced the Lewis and Clark expedition by foot, horse, and boat and wrote his first book, Westward Whoa published by Simon and Schuster in 1994.  Entertainment Weekly gave it an “A –“ and the book received a nice mention in The New Yorker.

Deciding he was an adventurer, Hodding set out to retrace Leif Ericsson’s voyage to the New World in an authentic replica of a Viking knar, or merchant ship.  The project took over his life and six years and many close calls with polar bears, icebergs and frostbite later, Ballantine published his account, A Viking Voyage, of this undertaking in 2000.   National Geographic Adventure called the book “Funny and f self-deprecating and sweetly engaging…It’s such a charming book, in fact, that when they do reach their goal you wish it had taken longer—and that you could have gone with them.”

In 2004, he sensed that things weren’t going so well for the Everglades, despite the $10 billion restoration effort, and wrote Stolen Water, published by Atria Books.  “Carter is a passionate grumbler,” Audubon magazine said in its Editor’s Choice review.  “Stolen Water is his love song to the Everglades as well as a heartfelt rejoinder to the dealmakers who brokered its restoration plan…”  

His 2006 book on plumbing, Flushed,  was called “delightful” by the LA Times and “witty, entertaining and just plain fun to read” by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

His most recent book, Off the Deep End, published this year by Algonquin, is about his attempt to qualify for the US Olympic swimming trials at the age of 45.  The New York Times, in an August 2008 review, wrote “…he’s a hell of a guy—just the wise-cracking warrior you might someday want to swim between islands with—and because, despite himself, he usually ends up doing the right thing…”

Hodding lives in Camden, Maine with his wife Lisa Lattes and their 4 children and coaches his local YMCA swim team.

The following is excerpted from coach Hodding's 2007-08 yearbook letter to the swimmers...

"As you all know, this was my first year coaching and I want to begin by saying that it has been one of the most wonderful, exhausting, exciting, exhausting, enlightening, exhausting, productive, exhausting years of my life. All of you are responsible and I thank you (as well as hold you responsible) from the bottom of my heart. I never knew what it felt like to care about the accomplishments and wellbeing of so many people at once, and what a group of people to care about!"