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Fishing: Reeling them in: Flower Mound has Bass Team
By Justin Thomas, jthomas@starlocalnews.com
With multiple athletes competing in a bracket-style format, UIL wrestling tournaments have plenty of down time.
Often, members of Flower Mound's squad, including head coach Steve Davis and his son Derek, spent the time rehashing stories of their latest fishing expeditions.
Recently, however, the tales set off a light bulb in the heads of the young wrestlers and multiple Jaguars wondered what it would be like to competitively fish in high school.
"My wrestling team knows that I enjoy bass fishing, and those kids that share my passion often swap photos and stories about our latest weekend fishing expeditions," Davis said. "And so it happened that we were between sessions at the UIL State Wrestling Tournament, imagining upcoming fishing trips during spring break, when two of my wrestlers, Jordan Speckels and Weston Cronan, pondered the question of what it would be like to fish in a Texas State High School Bass tournament. The thought they had read something about such a thing online. I told them I had never heard the like, but I would research it when we got home."
Davis soon found the time and discovered Speckels and Cronan were indeed correct.
The Bass Federation sponsors a high school student angler division patterned after the FLW College Division, including scholarship opportunities for the top finishers.
In order to compete in the State High School Bass Championships that were approaching in April, Davis and company followed the TBF model as instructed on highschoolfishing.org and started a club team featuring 14 Flower Mound students. The team managed to enter one boat in the event and have since sent entries to the Texas State Open and even sponsored an inaugural LISD Championship.
The Championship, which took place on Lake Lewisville, had a "big bass" competition that featured LISD alumni, faculty and administration. In the end, one of the driving forces behind the Bass team claimed the winning entry, as Derek -- a 2011 Flower Mound graduate now attending Oklahoma State -- reeled in an 8-pound bass to take top honors.
According to National TBF Youth Director Mark Gintert, the Bass Federation currently recognizes between 20-25 schools in Texas.
"It has been rapidly exploding," Gintert said. "The program has been only been running for two years and the explosion we are seeing in Texas is pretty typical of what is happening throughout the nation.
"The process is that a club, like the one at Flower Mound, gets started and the kids get excited about it. Then the team gets a little publicity and word starts to spread and then other neighboring schools get interested as well. Before you know it, the programs are running their own meets and tournaments."
That is exactly the case in LISD, where Davis believes Hebron could start a team next season, with Marcus and The Colony also expressing interest. Intrigue is growing in other parts of the nation as well, with the state associations in Illinois and Kentucky adding bass fishing as a sanctioned high school sport.
"It is our goal that every LISD should field a team next year so that we can put together a schedule of local events and have plenty of competition," Davis said. "High School bass fishing seems to be growing by leaps and bounds, I think fueled by the publicity generated by the FLW/TBF College Team circuit.
"The really neat thing about the sport is that you do not need to possess incredible athletic ability to be successful. Short and tall, thin and heavy, athlete and non-athlete, girls and boys, they all compete equally with a fishing rod in their hand. Oh sure, some luck is involved, but the more skilled you become, the less you must rely on luck."
While the growth of bass fishing has been impressive, there are still many factors limiting its development.
First, TBF events are formatted so that a team consists of two students, an adult and a boat. The latter two have both proven to be difficult to fill for the Hawg-Stickers.
"We are limited only by the number of boats and adults that are available to compete with us," Davis said. "This spring, we really flew by the seat of our pants. But next fall, we hope to really get something going that we will be very proud of. We want to put boats in every TBF event within driving distance."
In an effort to attract adult volunteers, Davis said the team could depart from TBF format and allow adults to compete with their student team. The Hawg-Stickers are also seeking to establish relationships with local bass fishing clubs in an effort to draw on their expertise.
"These kids need mentors," Davis said. "They really want to learn the art of fishing. Frankly, I am a wrestling coach who likes to fish. I would hardly qualify as an expert. The kids needed a faculty sponsor, and I fit the bill, but hopefully we can get some 'experts' to donate some time to teach these kids the sport. Time will tell."
Gintert, meanwhile, recommended a departure from using season anglers as captains as they are typically busy competing in their own bass tournaments. He also suggests using cheaper aluminum boats for competition.
"We just had a team win a big tournament in a camouflage deck-boat," he said. "It's not about the type of boat that you fish in, though there are obviously more luxurious options."
Gintert also said he has seen an uptick in national competitions.
"The process is that we have SAF state tournaments in every state," he said. "The winners then move on to regional meets and then national championships. And there are also open tournaments. In two weeks, we have what is called the High School Fishing World Finals, which is kind of similar to the U.S. Open in golf."
The world finals, which take place July 15-21 in Russellville, Ark., are free and open to anyone.
"You can be a club team or just a couple of kids who want to fish," Gintert said. "You don't have to qualify through your state. You just need two fishers, a boat and captain. And there is no entry free, you just have to be an SAF member and find your way out to Russellville. And the winning team receives a $20,000, four-year scholarship to Bethel University."
And while participation is on the uptick, with the potential of UIL support in the future, the Hawg-Stickers are fine with the club label for now, in particular with the strains athletic departments are already currently enduring.
"If this TBF Student Angler division grows like I believe it will, and with all the great bass lakes in Texas, it is no stretch of the imagination to consider that the UIL might sanction bass fishing as a high school sport in a few years," Davis said. "If and when that happens, it would be nice for FMHS to be positioned to compete at the highest level. After all, when I came to Texas, wrestling was a club sport run by the TIWA."
Gintert added he believes there will be more than 10,000 students in the federation by this time next year.
"For anyone interested, all they have to do is go to highschoolfishing.org and fill out the application for a free packet of information and we'll give you the whole presentation of what you need to do. We're very excited that this has turned into such a big deal for these schools."
For more information on Flower Mound's bass team, go to: fmhsbassteam.com.
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