PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — Former WHOU announcer Jim Carter has withdrawn from the Presque Isle High School Hall of Fame and its selection committee after being fired last month for making body-shaming comments about female players on air.
Carter, as well as co-announcer Steve Shaw, made comments regarding the weight and appearance of female players in a basketball game that they were watching, but not announcing at the time. The two men were unaware that their microphones were turned on. Carter and Shaw had been broadcasting for decades and were heavily involved in high school sports in Aroostook County.
Carter’s withdrawal from the Presque Isle High School Hall of Fame comes just less than two weeks after Shaw withdrew from the Maine Basketball Hall of Fame.
Carter was instrumental in establishing the Presque Isle High School Hall of Fame in 2011, and was inducted as a member in 2012.
“Jim and I had a conversation about the future and determined that it was in the best interest of the hall of fame to move forward without Jim’s involvement as a member of the selection committee or as a Hall of Fame inductee,” said Mark White, SAD 1 athletic director and PIHS Hall of Fame co-coordinator.
Carter was heavily involved in the world of sports in Aroostook. In 2004-05, he launched a fundraising campaign for the Class of 1964 that netted $10,000. Approximately $9,000 of that money was used to purchase the scoreboard that hangs in the high school gymnasium, with the other $1,000 being donated to the school’s library.
Carter also wrote stories about Presque Isle athletes that appeared in The Star-Herald, as well as wrote a book documenting six decades of basketball from 1950 to 2009.
Carter was a coach and teacher in Caribou for 25 years, leading boys basketball for 21 years at various levels, as well as other sports like cross country and baseball. He was named Big East coach of the year in 1998 and girls cross country coach of the year by the Bangor Daily News in 1989.