If tenacity had a poster child, it would be Carter Webb.
Spend five minutes with her on the phone, and you soon realize that just past her bright and bubbly personality is a woman who carries herself atop a sturdy foundation of sheer determination and downright grit.
Carter is in her 40s, living what she describes as a “pretty normal” life. But just past her daily routines and 9-to-5 job is an incredibly deep commitment to a sport she loves. Webb is a competitive aerialist who recently completed her third world competition.
But browse her bio and you might get stuck on words that carry weight: double mastectomy, cervical spine injury, as well as hamstring, ATFL and labrum tears.
While most would see these health hurdles as setbacks, Webb has taken these impediments to propel her – no pun intended – from one personal chapter to the next.
“I discovered pole and aerial arts at the tender age of 30 and am now a competitive aerialist,” said Webb, who has been performing for the past 11 years. “I have trained locally with both Louisville Turners Circus and Suspend Louisville.”
She may have stumbled upon the sport of aerial arts later in life, but Webb came to her love of the performing arts honestly; her mother was a dancer and her sister, six years her junior, is a circus school instructor. By age 3 Webb enrolled in dance and continued in that arena, learning tap, ballet and jazz into her high school years.
“Both my sister and I went to [duPont Manual High School],” she said. “I was a dancer there and she was more music theater. But there definitely was that foundation of, ‘This is what we love to do – performing arts.’ Later I would be the one to find the sport of aerialist first.”
Webb had just moved back to Louisville from Chicago, and a friend suggested she try circus.
She did her first showcase in hoop silks, handling fabric that measures approximately 27 feet from the ground up.
“My sister was there to watch me perform and afterward she was blown away,” she said. “She immediately started taking classes, joined circus school, and now she is an instructor. And my mom also now does clowning. So this really is a family adventure, always.”
The draw to be involved in the arena of circus and aerial arts competitively began early on for Webb.
“That first time I was in competitive dance, it was so intensely competitive and fun,” she said. “There was so much going on and there were so many different routines and participants. I had never been to a regional, a national – any venue like that. The level of creating was just incredible. That’s when I think I knew this is definitely for me.’”
Webb continued on as a member of duPont Manual High School’s Dazzler and Planet Dance All Stars as a competitive dancer. After high school she lived in Chicago for a few years, and continued training and dancing as a professional cheerleader for the Chicago Storm (2007-2008). Webb then moved back to Louisville and joined Louisville Dance Alliance and their VDFC modern dance company.
“It was at this time that I was introduced to circus aerial arts by company members,” Webb said. “So that was 2012. I started pole classes late that year and joined Louisville Turners Circus for aerial arts shortly thereafter in 2013.”
She began competing in this capacity in 2018. Her first competition was the Pole Champion Series at the Arnold in Columbus where she placed fifth in the intermediate division.
In 2020 she switched to virtual competitions due to the lockdowns.
She then began ramping up competitions in 2021 and placed first at Pole Sport Organization nationals for her division (Entertainment Level 4) in Orlando.
“In 2022 I competed in [U.S. Pole Sports Federation] nationals,” Webb said.
“And this entire time, in my adult life at least, this has not been a full-time job,” she adds jokingly.
But one aspect of the sport has been; injuries have peppered her career – so much so, that she is known as the comeback kid.
“I’ve been known as that, yes – because the ‘offs’ in my career, specifically with aerial and pole competition, haven’t always been at my discretion,” she said. “I have had to restart my journey several times due to various health issues.”
Age 39 in particular was the year of injury, Webb said.
“That was the year everything started happening,” she said. “In January I was training rope and suffered an ATFL tear. I adjusted to that recovery, kept going, and then in May was my first big fall. I fell on my neck; I fell on the crash mat. A lot of people use crash mats for safety when training, and they do work. I just landed in such a way that the herniated disc happened. And then I got somewhat better from that. In November I was in Vegas. I tore my hamstring off the bone. I thought that was the end of my career, but I’m so bullheaded.”
She would power through, chalking up hundreds of hours of physical therapy, relying on her grit and determination to help heal her body, and remembering what she had already been through in her career up until that point.
“I remember in my late 20s and early 30s, and I could see my performance regressing,” she said. “So I got a new skill set. I knew that if I could do that, then I could get through to a healthy physical state – maybe even participate again.”
Webb did not just persevere to live another day in the sport; she is a world champion. In 2024 she competed at the Pole Sports & Arts World Federation’s (POSA) and International Pole & Aerial Sports Federation’s (IPSF) respective U.S. nationals, hosted in Europe, and then qualified for both team USA squads.
She won gold in Amateur Silks Art and silver in Amateur Hoop Art at POSA’s World Aerial Arts Championship in Athens, Greece, and gold in Artistic Aerial Pole PRO in IPSF’s World Pole & Aerial Championship, hosted in Sweden.
So what exactly is it about this acrobat-in-the-air lifestyle that keeps Webb practicing four to five days per week, even more excited for future competition than the past?
“I love that it is a fusion of art and science,” she said. “I was a math major so the puzzle aspect of the sport is perfect for me. When you go through these competitions, there are all these elements – strength, flexibility, technical bonus are some – and the judges will point you based on those elements in the Code of Points. So when you are creating the routine you have to come up with a complete package, but at the same time you are choosing elements to make this story. So I like tinkering with it. That art and science and balancing, it is exciting to me, almost like actively working on a puzzle. I find that super fun.”
She isn’t one to sit on her laurels, and she does have one last little item to check off her bucket list. In March she will enter as a semipro in the Louisville Turners Circus festival competition with more than 700 other performers.
Webb said this truly might be her final frontier. Vying for a spot in a traveling circus is no joke, after all.
“It’s funny isn’t it, just to say out loud?” she said. “I am running away with the circus. It isn’t what I expected to be possibly saying at this point in my life.”
She said this sport is something she will continue to do until the bittersweet end.
