Port St. Lucie basketball pro Chris Carter shoots, scores as author for children
Chris Carter doesn’t trust European barbers.
“I like my waves; I want my hair to be cut a certain way,” Carter, a Port St. Lucie native and Florida Tech alum, said, over a WhatsApp call from his home in Rostock, Germany. “I don’t want just anybody trying something new. If I am the only American, let alone Black guy you’ve ever seen, this could go really bad.”
After a year living in Ukraine and now, six in Germany, as a professional basketball player, it was “a lot of trial and error” for Carter - a 6’3” point guard for the Rostock Seawolves - in search of the perfect haircut.
“I found a Turkish barber,” Carter said. “I’ve finally been getting [good] haircuts out here.”
One bad hair day after another gave him his on-court signature look: a wide, customized, athletic headband with the word “PGLingo” – short for point guard language - inscribed.
“It became my statement piece,” Carter said. “I didn’t think anything of it until kids started coming up to me [with headbands on] asking to take pictures with me.”
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The lesson for Carter, 30, who only recently began speaking German and taking German classes, is the universality of his sport.
“Basketball is a game played all over the world,” Carter said. “You can communicate, play and have fun, without ever having to speak the same tongue. Basketball is its own language.”
The reaction from kids to his headband, led Carter down a second career path: moonlighting as a children’s book author.
“I don’t want to just play basketball and once my career is over that’s it,” Carter said. “I wanted to have something to show for what I’ve done in Germany and Europe.”
Last December, Carter began writing “Ivy” a 45-page, chapter book, that tells the story of Ivy Parker, a sixth-grade girl, unexpectedly uprooted from her home in Port St. Lucie, when her father accepts an embassy job in Dusseldorf, Germany.
Carter described the book as an almost re-telling of the 2002 film “Like Mike.”
“I was interested in the children’s book idea because I connect well with the kids [here],” he said.
The process of writing the book started with a monologue and chapter outline. Carter then contracted a self-publishing company in Houston, Texas, that helped him polish and edit the rest of the story.
On balancing the demands of pro basketball and writing, Carter said: “I just grinded a little bit every day – 30 minutes or an hour. There were a lot of late nights and early mornings.”
On June 16, just weeks after winning a championship, the book was published in English and German, becoming available on Amazon.
“I still can’t believe it when I look at Amazon,” Carter said. “Even if it doesn’t do well selling, I can say ‘hey I did something for myself that shows the fans and my people back home, anything is really possible.’”
A big year for Carter.
“I won a championship; learned German; passed a citizenship test; got engaged; wrote a book in two languages,” he said. “I never wanted to be one of those guys that says they want to do something and never act on it.”
“I’m not surprised at all about the book,” Keith Wright, a former teammate of Carter’s in Rostock, added. “One thing I got to know about Chris is he will always follow through with whatever he sets his mind to. A lot of players just focus on the hoop aspect when they are overseas. Chris not only learned the language; he wrote a book for the children in the country he has played in. I feel lucky to be able to call him a friend.”
The theme of “Ivy” is perseverance; navigating strange and scary new experiences. For Carter, this is now almost second nature.
“I’m telling her story – but if you read it, you’ll realize quickly this is a couple of versions of me,” Carter said. “I was just using my imagine on how it would be living with me as a child and I am your dad.”
At 12, Carter was uprooted from his home in Brooklyn to South Florida, with his younger brother and mother – his dad stayed in New York.
“My mom and my dad broke up,” Carter remembered. “My relationship with my dad suffered. In the book, I wrote the father how I would like to be, instead of what happened with me.”
His resiliency was further developed after spending two years at the United States Air Force Academy, before transferring to FIT and living nearly year-round as an adult, abroad in foreign cultures surrounded by languages he didn’t understand.
“I was the only American on my team in Ukraine,” Carter said. “During timeouts, my coach is speaking pure Russian – I had an interpreter tell me what I am doing. My best friend on the team was 16, because he was the only guy who spoke English. He would take me to the grocery store. Because everything is [written] in Cyrillic, I’d buy butter to make eggs and it would be cream cheese.”
Carter said he plans to play another four to five years of professional basketball and then potentially look for a coaching role. Like the father in “Ivy” he is hopeful to one day get a job with the American embassy in Germany.
Until then, one thing will remain a constant:
“I still wear my head band,” Carter said with a laugh.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Rostock basketball pro Chris Carter publishes book in English, German
