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From The Sugar Cane Plantation To The International Swimming Stage

Published May 30, 2016 at 10:40 AM PDT
Julie Checkoway’s new book tells the true story of a group of students whose teacher challenged them to become Olympians. (Courtesy of Blossom Young)
Julie Checkoway’s new book tells the true story of a group of students whose teacher challenged them to become Olympians. (Courtesy of Blossom Young)

In the 1930s, a Japanese-American teacher in Hawaii came up with an ambitious plan: take kids who had just learned to swim in a re-purposed sugar cane ditch and train them to compete on an international level.

Julie Checkoway tells the story in “The Three Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui’s Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory.” Here & Now revisits Meghna Chakrabarti’s conversation with the author from last October.

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