MOULTRIE — Sure, Moultrie has its watermelons and cotton, its peanuts and corn, the stuff of summer. It also has the stuff of local legend, Carson Tyler.
Tyler, 20, is in Paris. Paris, France. He’s on the biggest of athletic stages as teams from nations across the world are in France’s capital for the 2024 Olympics. The Games’ opening ceremony took place Friday morning.
Tyler is a diver – has been for three-quarters of his life. He qualified earlier this year for the Olympic team with a series of twisting, flipping dives that left wonderstruck judges and fans shaking their heads.
For Tyler, the trip to Paris —six time zones and 4,300 miles away — began when, as a curious 5-year-old, he watched some bigger kids diving into the depths of a pool at a facility in his hometown 180 miles south of Atlanta.
Now, Tyler, as homegrown as the crops that stretch across the flat, green expanses of South Georgia, is competing with the world’s best. Moultrie, population 15,000, couldn’t be prouder, or more confident that its young man will come home with something precious – memories, of course, and maybe something gold.
“He’s a local boy. We’re so proud of him,” said Moultrie City Councilman Daniel Dunn, a financial adviser with an office on the town square. His window features a painting of the famed five rings of the Olympic Games and the name of Moultrie’s No. 1 athlete. Other merchants are getting their windows decorated, too.
“This ranks as one of the top things ever to happen in Moultrie,” Dunn said.
That’s not hyperbole. Only one person born in Moultrie, Michael “Tate” Armstrong, has been to the Olympics. He played on the USA basketball team that took the gold in the 1976 games. But Armstrong was not raised in Moultrie; Tyler is as firmly rooted here as the magnolias outside the Colquitt County Courthouse.
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
The groundwork for Tyler’s success was laid decades ago, when a farmer set aside a bit of land for a diving pool.
In the mid-1960s, Robert “Moose” Moss built a pool beside a cotton field near Moultrie, inviting competitive divers to train. Though he knew little about diving, he created a facility that has few equals. It became so popular that divers camped out nearby just for the chance to use the pool’s high dive and platform, said his son, Rick Moss.
The elder Moss coined a name for his aquatic acrobats – the Diving Tigers, an homage to his World War II tenure as a Flying Tiger, piloting shark-toothed P-40 war planes over China. The current facility, completed in 1993 and located near downtown, features an array of boards and platforms. They range from routine, 1 meter high, to a breathtaking 10 meters, or roughly three stories above the pool’s blue, rippling depths. Divers who take the high plunge hit the water at about 28 mph.
Moose Moss died in 1993. Rick Moss has continued his father’s legacy and is executive director of the nonprofit Moss Farms Diving. “My dad,” he said, “was one of the first to understand sports tourism.”
Moss Farms today is renowned as a finishing school for divers headed to college. The University of Georgia routinely recruits Moss Farms divers. The facility is on the radar of other colleges, as well. When he graduated from Colquitt County High School in 2021, Tyler enrolled at Indiana University, home of one of the nation’s premier diving programs.
Moultrie Mayor Bill McIntosh has watched Moss Farms produce what Moose Moss envisioned: an Olympian. When Tyler returns from Paris, McIntosh will give him a key to the city. This is no small thing.
“I’m pretty stingy with my keys to the city,” the mayor said.
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
‘Special’ moment
They knew Carson was different. Charlton and Laura Tyler’s first two children, girls, were the sort of kids who walked across a room; Carson bounded. His sisters sat; he stood. The kid bashed, boomed and banged his way through the house.
He took that energy to school. It did not go well. When the other kids worked at their desks, Carson insisted on standing. He could not, would not, be still. Before long, the youngster had a growing reputation, not a good one.
Laura Tyler fretted. There’d been calls from school, conversations. One day, a kid in class said out loud what others had thought: He’s trouble.
What happened next changed life in the Tyler household.
A teacher spoke up. No, she corrected the child. Carson is special.
“That was probably the first time that someone (in school) had held him up,” Laura Tyler said in a recent interview. “It made such a difference to me.”
He took an aptitude test and aced every category, so mom and dad knew: Their kid was different, in a good way. The best course of action was to keep the boy busy.
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
Charlton Tyler enrolled his son in a summer tennis program. Lessons were held on courts adjacent to the city-county public pool. Next to that was the Moss Farms center.
One day, there was a moment on the court. The restless 5-year-old made a declaration. “He just did not like it,” Charlton recalled.
He remembers telling his son, “If you’re not going to play tennis, you’ve got to do something. What is it you want to do?”
“I want to dive,” answered the boy.
So, Carson’s parents enrolled him at Moss Farms. As he grew, he began going to two practices a day — early mornings, before the Georgia sun was at full throttle, and late afternoons as the sun eased past the pines.
The parents realized that their son had a mental toughness — brought on, perhaps, by the decision to let their academically adept son skip second grade. That put Carson in classes where he was routinely the youngest.
“He was always the smallest,” said his dad. “I think that made him more competitive.”
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
Credit: Ziyu Julian Zhu/AJC
How competitive? On a recent morning, Tyler’s parents and his younger sister laid out dozens of swimming medals on their kitchen counter, taken from a worn cardboard box overflowing with reminders of past victories. Kid sister Caroline reached for a runner-up medal, but her dad stopped her, the message clear: Just the first-place awards. They nearly covered the counter.
If he didn’t bring home a medal back then? “It was not a good time to pick on him,” said Charlton Tyler.
The box still has room for one medal more.
Energy and focus
Elizabeth Ann Barber remembers the first time she saw the kid who would become an Olympian. She was a junior at Colquitt County High; he was in elementary school, a puppy in the pack of Moss Farms divers.
“He was super, super energy, bouncing all around the place,” she recalled.
Barber went on to a four-year collegiate career diving at UGA, where she helped the Bulldogs win two national diving championships. She returned to Moultrie and took a coaching job at Moss Farms. She also got reacquainted with Carson Tyler.
“The high energy,” she said, “had turned into high focus.”
John Fox saw something special too. “His focus was not limited,” said Fox, who worked with the young diver for six years at Moss Farms, from the time his student was 11. “He always wanted to be challenged.”
Fox, now a coach at Auburn University, has a final piece of advice for his former student.
“I would tell him to let it fly,” Fox said. “He’s ready. He’s as ready as can be.”
Credit: Courtey of Tyler family
Credit: Courtey of Tyler family
Tyler can do it, said Tom Gimm, the current head coach at Moss Farms. He’s watched Tyler grow, and not just physically. The art of diving, Gimm knows, calls for equal parts brawn and brain. Tyler has both.
“Diving,” he said, “is not a typical sport.”
It’s a sport that requires a diver to complete five distinct steps, from approaching the water to entering it. Any misstep can sink a contender’s chances.
Tyler has mastered each, said Gimm. His former student doesn’t scare easily. “He’s one of the best” at grace under pressure, Gimm said.
He’s a role model for Bo Bridges,18, a Moss Farms diver who has committed to UGA.
Bridges recalled participating in a national competition three years ago with Tyler. Bridges had just finished a 10-meter dive. He hopped out of the pool, trailing water like an otter, and looked up to see Tyler ascending the platform. His friend looked down at him.
Watch this.
Bridges watched.
Tyler leapt into the air, spinning as if a tornado had grabbed him. The last thing Bridges saw was his teammate’s feet, vanishing in the water, scarcely leaving a ripple.
“Carson shredded it,” said Bridges, using a verb athletes reserve only for the best performances. “All 10s!”
Tyler is extraordinary, said Camille Bowden. A former competitive diver for Florida State University, she had the Olympics in her sights until a serious ankle injury changed those plans. She’s now a chiropractor and a certified diving judge.
“God definitely gave him a gift,” said Bowden, who is leaving her three kids — 5, 3 and 1 — and husband at home so she can head to Paris to watch Tyler compete. “I knew, one day, that he could be an Olympian.”
That day is here. Moultrie is holding its breath.
Paris Olympics diving competitions schedule:
3-meter springboard
Aug. 6: Preliminary competition
Aug. 7: Semifinal competition
Aug. 8: Finals
https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/schedule/diving/men-s-3m-springboard?day=6-august
10-meter platform
Aug. 9: Preliminary competition
Aug. 10: Semifinal competition
Aug. 10: Finals
https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/schedule/diving/men-s-10m-platform?day=9-august
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