From The Sugar Cane Plantation To The International Swimming Stage

Published May 30, 2016 at 1:40 PM EDT

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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.

Hear our original segment from October 2015 and read an excerpt of “The Three Year Swim Club”

Guest

Julie Checkoway, author of “The Three Year Swim Club.” She tweets @juliecheckoway.