Mark McCarter
Class of 2015
Ask Mark McCarter what he’d rather be than a sportswriter and he’ll answer like a third-grader with a big imagination: big-league ballplayer, astronaut, cowboy, race-car driver. Instead, he became the guy who watched Jack Nicklaus at Augusta, Herschel Walker in his prime, Greg Maddux on a painter’s day, Dale Earnhardt at Daytona—and filed the stories that made those moments feel close to home.
A Chattanooga native, McCarter started in 1970 as a high-school stringer and go-fer for the News-Free Press, eventually covering UTC, the Lookouts, and everything from football to auto racing over 19 years. He was sports editor of The Anniston Star (1989–92), then moved to the private sector before joining The Huntsville Times in 1998. There he chronicled 10 NCAA Final Fours, 13 Daytona 500s, multiple BCS national title games, five Super Bowls, and the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
He’s a four-time National Sportscasters & Sportswriters Association Alabama Sportswriter of the Year and the Alabama Sports Writers Association’s 2003 honoree, with shelves of state, regional, and national awards. In 2012 he entered the Greater Chattanooga Sports Hall of Fame; in 2014 he published Never a Bad Game, a widely praised history of the Southern League. Later, he authored Baseball in Huntsville and, after 17 years as a columnist, shifted to a broader general-interest column for Alabama Media Group. He also served as assistant athletic director for external operations at UAH and received the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame’s Mel Allen Award for lifetime contributions in media.
McCarter credits his parents, Dot and Frank, for planting the journalism seed—buying his first typewriter, saving his columns, and cheering the bylines. Married to fellow writer Patricia Cavanaugh McCarter, he’s proof that great storytelling serves the big events—and the neighbors next door—with equal care.
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