RUSSELLVILLE — A pair of Kentucky boys took the nation’s best student anglers to school Saturday in the first High School Fishing World Finals.
Jared Raymer and Ethan Snyder, juniors at Meade County High School in Brandenburg, Ky., caught five bass weighing 16 pounds, 2 ounces, in the final round to win the tournament. Both angers won four-year scholarships of $4,000 per year to Bethel University in Tennessee to compete on the Bethel Wildcats fishing team.
“I’ve been a Wildcats fanall my life, but I’ve always worn blue,” said Raymer, referring to the Kentucky Wildcats. “Now, my favorite color is [Bethel] purple!”
On Lake Dardanelle for the first time, Raymer and Snyder fished a single grass bed all three days. On Thursday, they caught three largemouth bass that weighed 7-9, and then caught 12-10 Friday.
The seven teams that made the final started Saturday with zero weight, but Meade County’s grassbed got even better, producing an extra bass that gave Raymer and Snyder a comfortable margin over Thomas Chambers and Brandon Koon of Arizona’sNorth Canyon High School, who caught five bass that weighed 14-8.
Sawyer Grace and Austen Cathcart of Russellville High School finished third (5 bass, 12-3), followed by Austin Moody and Aimee Cresswell of Dover High School (5, 12-3), Jonny Schultz and Thomas Rose of Episcopal Collegiate (5, 10-14), Sam Starr and Brady Sherman of Topeka (Kan.) McPherson High School (3, 8-0) and Jordan Burdette and Brandon Merical of Knoxville (Tenn.) Farragut High School (0, 0-0).
“I’m flabbergasted,” Raymer said. “We worked hard and caught six fish all day,and we culled once. We caught them all in the last 10 minutes. We were praying, doing everything we could to get fish to bite. We’re going to church tomorrow.”
Competing on their home lake, Grace and Cathcart lamented lost opportunities. Grace said he lost two fish that totaled close to 10 pounds, including a 5-pounder that snapped his rod on the hookset.
“It was a brand-new rod, a Falcon Cara,” Grace said. “I just bought it two weeks ago. It broke in two places. I’d already lost a good one, so I knew that was going to kill us. We knew it was goingto be tough to catch enough fish day to day, but we knew we could do it.”
Presenting the scholarship checks to the winners was Garry Mason, Bethel University’s fishing coach. Bethel is the first four-year college to recruit students with bass fishing scholarships. Mason said Bethel doesn’t have the resources to recruit the caliber of football, basketball or baseball players to be competitive in those sports, but it can maintain a top-notch fishing program.
“Most of the students coming to Bethel have finished their competitive careers in other sports,” Masonsaid. “They’re not the caliber of athletes that can be competitive at the college level, but they love fishing, and this gives them an opportunity to continue their college careers. What it means for Bethel is that we’re building a fishing powerhouse. We’re recruiting out of this tournament because we feel this is where we can get the best anglers.”
Mason laughed when asked what two-a-day practices are like for the fishing team.
“We don’t have two-adays,” he said. “We start at sunrise and go to dark.”
Sports, Pages 39 on 07/25/2010